The office of Kejriwal’s Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar was raided by CBI yesterday in a corruption case triggering a fresh face-off between the AAP and Centre and a vicious political slugfest in which the AAP chief lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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The war which began after Arvind Kejriwal had tweeted that the CBI is raiding his office, quickly spilled over to name calling & #politicaljihad.
The CBI spokesperson countered that Kejriwal’s office was neither searched nor sealed, and whatever was taken away was related to corruption allegations against Rajendra Kumar. “If Jaitley ji were let off without investigations on basis of his press denial, then should all coal and 2G accused also be similarly let off?” the Delhi chief minister asked in a series of tweets.
AAP alleges that there were financial irregularities when Jaitley was the president of the Delhi cricket body for 13 years till December, 2013.
Jaitley, who had earlier termed the allegations as rubbish, said he could not reply to such vague allegations and suggested that AAP was trying to deflect the issue of alleged corruption by a senior Delhi bureaucrat.
On Tuesday, the CBI raided at the third floor office of Kumar in the Delhi secretariat. “The assistant delivered the money to his vehicle, which was intercepted by the CBI outside his office and the officer was nabbed with the bribe amount”, a CBI official said. “What is his role in DDCA scam?” and “FM lied in the Parliament yesterday”. Even though Delhi is not a full state, the autonomy of Chief Minister’s office should not be violated.
On Wednesday, Phoolka had described CBI’s action against Kumar as “politically motivated” and said his client was being made a “scape goat”. “The Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, seems to believe in untruth and defamation, delivered in a language that borders on hysteria”, he added. After all, it takes some special imagination to tell the press that you have “unearthed” Rs 28 lakh in the bank accounts of an IAS officer.
He also spoke about Kejriwal’s claim that the CBI officials were looking for “cricket-oriented” files relating to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and demanded setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to go into various aspect of the agency’s functioning.
The Aam Aadmi Party has been firing salvos at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after CBI raided the Delhi Secretariat.
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The CBI had registered a case against Kejriwal’s Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar for allegedly favouring a firm in getting contracts from Delhi Government.
