The AAP on Sunday held an “emergency meeting” of its office-bearers to decide the party’s next course of action after several top leaders were “detained” while protesting against the CBI summoning Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the excise policy case. “The Delhi Police has arrested us for sitting peacefully and is taking us to some unknown place... What kind of dictatorship is this?” Chadha tweeted in Hindi.
The AAP’s Delhi unit convenor Gopal Rai chaired the meeting, which included Mayor Shelly Oberoi, Deputy Mayor Aaley Mohammad Iqbal, the party’s national secretary Pankaj Gupta and leader Jasmine Shah.
As many as 1,350 people, including several senior AAP leaders were detained by the Delhi Police while they were staging a sit-in protest against Kejriwal’s summoning in connection with the excise policy case. The detainees included Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, Delhi Ministers Saurabh Bharadwaj, Atishi and Kailash Gahlot, AAP spokesperson Adil Ahmad Khan, its general secretary Pankaj Gupta and some Ministers in the Punjab Government.
However, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who also joined the sit-in on Archbishop Road, had left the spot before the other AAP leaders’ detention.
The detainees were released by the police later in the night. While being released from the police station, the AAP leaders raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The CBI summoned Kejriwal to its office to answer questions of the investigation team as a witness in the excise policy case, according to a notice issued by the agency.