Despite the controversy surrounding Delhi’s law Minister Somnath Bharti, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal remained unrepentant by outrightly dismissing the former’s indictment by a CBI court during his stint as a lawyer.
Kejriwal’s rejection of the court’s observation is an apparent departure from his style of politics — seeking resignation from people in office on mere charges of corruption or inappropriation. Kejriwal too was not far behind in putting allegations against the likes of Robert Vadra, former BJP president Nitin Gadkari, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and others and agitating for their resignations and immediate arrest. This is also something which the Delhi Chief Minister and his Aam Aadmi Party would find difficult to answer when they go to the public for the upcoming General Elections.
“You decide what evidence has been tampered with after watching the recording. We respect the court but in this matter the court is wrong... The judge called the sting operation as tampering of evidence. This is not tampering of evidence,” Kejriwal said. It came as no surprise that the Opposition BJP and AAP’s ally Congress were quick to condemn Kejriwal over the issue saying the party that came to power on the basis of morality should question its own conscience.
This is not the first time that Kejriwal and his party have been in midst of a controversy. Earlier, before the Delhi Assembly polls, a sting operation had caught AAP member Shazia Ilmi demanding money for staging protest against a private firm only to be trashed by Kejriwal who went on to question the authenticity of the sting operation. He also sought raw footage of the video to be examined by his own party to establish the ‘truth’. The AAP chief also dubbed the sting ops as ‘unreliable’ while giving a clean chit to his party members. But interestingly, it was a sting op that was the basis on which Kejriwal levelled corruption charges against Salman Khurshid and threatened to launch an agitation for his removal from the Cabinet.