“I have a message for Mr. Modi: “You can’t scare me”. The third floor also houses Arvind Kejriwal’s office.
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“The CM’s office is raided, his files are raided”. My own office files are being looked into to get some evidence against me. “Let Modi say which file he wants?”
Kejriwal had yesterday called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “psychopath” and “coward” after the raids and targeted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over alleged corruption in Delhi’s cricket body under his watch. Jaitley told the parliament on Tuesday that the CBI only raided the office of Kejriwal’s Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar over transactions in his earlier capacities. “I wud hv [sic] acted against me”. There were complaints against him (Rajendra Kumar) in 2012, in 2014, RTI queries have revealed the same then if CBI enquires, why is he (Kejriwal) so baffled?
Kejriwal, a self-styled revolutionary, has also been pushing to be given control of the police force operating in Delhi in line with other state administrations. This restriction has limited Mr Kejriwal’s ability to improve law and order in Delhi.
As a secretary in the health and family welfare department of the Delhi government, Rajendra allegedly awarded a Rs.2.43 crore manpower project in the health ministry to Endeavour Systems through ICSIL in November 2010.
A furious BJP lashed out at Kejriwal for his “disgraceful” remarks against Modi, and said it was shameful that the CM who came from the “womb of” anti-graft stir was protecting an officer involved in a “textbook case of corruption”.
As soon as the news of the raid broke, AAP fielded a battery of spokespersons and launched a sharp offensive against the Centre on social media with hashtags such as #ModifearsKejriwal and #CowardModi. The CBI has been accused of bending to political interests in the past. Even though Delhi is not a full state, the autonomy of Chief Minister’s office should not be violated. The agency, too, repeated its denials saying the office of the chief minister was “neither searched nor sealed”.
CBI has, however, denied the allegations.
The CBI is nominally independent but long suspected of being under government influence. Training his guns on the PM, Bandyopadhyay said senior Gujarat cadre officers had been deputed in CBI and one of them “shared” his name with Modi and the agency had turned into “GBI”. “Prime minister Modi has nothing to do with this”.
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CBI should be free and need not take any permission, he added. As a result, it has often been used by governments against opponents.
