Kejriwal is on a three-day trip to Gujarat, having chosen to avoid the Enforcement Directorate’s summons for the third time.
The Chief Minister of Delhi and National Convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Arvind Kejriwal, is embarking on a three-day trip to Gujarat, having chosen to avoid the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) summons for the third time in connection to a money laundering case associated with Delhi’s excise policy.
Kejriwal left Delhi for a three-day visit to Gujarat on Saturday, January 6, 2024. Party backed the CM’s decision and said that the trip was planned much earlier. Kejriwal visited Gujarat to oversee the organisational preparation ahead of the upcoming Loksabha election in 2024, which is slated to be held in a few months.
During his Gujarat visit, besides addressing the ‘Jansabha’ (public meet) and workers’ meet, he will also meet AAP MLA Chaitar Vasava from the Dediapada constituency, who is currently in jail, and Delhi CM will also meet his family.
However, AAP leaders claimed the visit was planned earlier, but the timing and choice of state—PM Narendra Modi’s home turf—are seen as significant given that Kejriwal has alleged that the ED is trying to arrest him at the behest of the central government and that the Centre is misusing investigating agencies against opposition leaders.
Earlier in the week, after skipping the third ED summons in a row, Arvind Kejriwal claimed through an online press conference that the ED’s repeated summons in the alleged liquor scam, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, were an attempt to hinder his campaigning.
“BJP’s aim is not to interrogate but to arrest me and stop me from campaigning in Lok Sabha elections,” he said. “They have kept many of our leaders in jail by making fake cases, and now they want to arrest me,” he added.
He also wrote a letter to the ED and accused the central agency of not working according to the law. In the letter that he wrote to ED, he accused the Enforcement Directorate of being “opaque and arbitrary” and asked the probe agency if it was issuing summons to tarnish his reputation. Kejriwal also questioned the silence of the ED in his response to the probe agency, raising legal objections over the summons being issued by the probe agency to him.
“Every time, before the summons reaches me, it is already there in the media. This raises questions about whether the purpose of the summons is to do any legitimate inquiry or tarnish my reputation,” wrote the Delhi CM.