The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had prepared the plans to arrest Delhi Chief Minister and chief of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday afternoon, according to sources.
Earlier in the day, Kejriwal had suffered a major legal setback after a division bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain of the Delhi High court refused to grant any interim protection from arrest to Kejriwal in relation to the summons issued to him by the ED in connection with the Delhi excise policy scam.
Kejriwal’s arrest became imminent with the founder of Indian Against Corruption movement deciding to skip even the ninth summon the agency had issued to him on 17 March seeking his presence for questioning.
The Delhi High Court had told Kejriwal that his plea for interim protection will be heard on 22 April with his main petition challenging the ED’s summons.
Kejriwal and the AAP had moved to the Supreme court on Thursday itself against the order of the High court seeking an urgent hearing in the case. However, no details had emerged on its present status.
His party colleagues including Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh and former deputy CM Manish Sisodia are already in jail for their alleged involvement in the case. Another senior leader Satyendra Jain too is in prison for alleged offences of money laundering.
With this high profile arrest of Kejriwal, now AAP will be dependent on Atishi Marlena, Sandeep Pathak and Raghav Chadda to guide AAP workers for the upcoming general elections. While Delhi votes on 25 May, Punjab, where the AAP is in power in the assembly , goes to the polls on 1 June.
However, all these leaders have internal differences among themselves and it remains to be seen that without Kejriwal being present, how will they be able to steer AAP out of the choppy water it finds itself now.
Incidentally former Jhakhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren too was arrested by the ED in a different case on 31 January after he had skipped nine summons resulting in the ED reaching his home with the tenth summon and then arresting him from Ranchi.
On Thursday night at 7 PM a team of ED officials, accompanied by a large posse of Delhi police personnel including DCP level officers, reached Kejriwal’s house with the 10th summon and after two hours of questioning him, arrested him at 9 PM.
ED sources told the Daily Guardian that Kejriwal was not cooperating and giving clear answers leading to his formal arrest.
On 15 March Bhartiya Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha, daughter of former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, was also arrested by the ED in the Delhi liquor policy case from her Hyderabad residence on Friday.
Official sources told the Daily Guardian that inputs gathered by the intelligence teams had found that Kejriwal and AAP had lost popularity on the ground due to the corruption perception that had engulfed the leaders which was also evident from people not coming out on roads to protest the arrest of top AAP leaders like Sisodia. This understanding also played a part in arresting Kejriwal.
The Delhi excise case had arisen out of a report submitted by Delhi Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar to Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena in July 2022, pointing to alleged procedural lapses in the formulation of the policy. The report had claimed that the said excise policy had led to “financial losses to the exchequer” estimated at more than Rs 580 crore and that AAP leaders had received kickbacks from private parties.
