NEW DELHI, March 24
The Aam Aadmi Party has questioned the silence maintained by the BJP over its relationship with Sarath Chandra Reddy, the prime accused and the ‘kingpin’ of the so-called Delhi liquor excise scam, whose companies donated Rs 60 crore to the BJP through electoral bonds.
The AAP has written a letter to BJP president JP Nadda seeking answers to its three questions be made public now that money trail to BJP account has been established by electoral bond donations received from Reddy’s firms.
AAP senior leaders Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj and Shri Jasmine Shah, together with AAP Chief Spokesperson Ms. Priyanka Kakkar, today held a joint press conference in this connection at the party headquarters.
Addressing the media, senior leader and cabinet minister of the AAP, Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj stated, “Yesterday we told everyone through the media how the BJP secretly recovered donations amounting to around Rs 60 crores in the name of electoral bond. This is not an allegation of the AAP against the BJP, it is a fact. We have shown concrete proof, thorough evidence. This is established on the website of the Election Commission of India that the BJP has recovered donations amounting to Rs.55 crore from the prime accused in the alleged Delhi excise policy, Sarath Chandra Reddy, who was also titled as the ‘kingpin’ in the scam, after his arrest.”
The senior AAP leader expressed his surprise over the BJP’s silence in this entire matter. “Their prominent leaders and ministers, including Shri Anurag Thakur, Ms. Smriti Irani, Shri Manoj Tiwari, Shri Virendra Sachdeva, everyone is silent. Every person is stunned as to what has happened. How did this matter come to light?,” he said.
Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj said the BJP not only received Rs 55 crore donation after Sarath Chandra Reddy’s arrest, but it also encashed those bonds even when he was already declared as the prime accused in the alleged excise policy scam. The ED and the Central Government have themselves accused Reddy of PMLA, which means he has done money laundering. The BJP took money in donation from the same man whom they are accusing everyday as the prime accused in excise policy case, who has given Rs 100 crore in bribe to the AAP. This proves that the BJP has been doing money laundering through electoral bonds, added the Delhi Cabinet Minister.
Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj asked three questions of the BJP at the press conference.
“The first question is that how does the BJP know Sarath Chandra Reddy? What is the relationship between them? How does the BJP know the prime accused of PMLA? Which BJP leaders met him? When and where did they meet? What did they discuss about the transactions?”
The senior AAP leader further said that electoral bonds are not donated in vacuum. Electoral bonds cannot be transferred directly to the accounts, these are given physically to the party. “It is not that someone placed a bond of Rs 50 crore at their door, and the BJP people opened their office in the morning and suddenly saw ‘Oh, there is a bond!’. The accused must have given the bonds to someone in person, whether a minister or any chairperson,” he said.
The second question is that why did the BJP receive donations amounting to a whopping Rs 60 crore from Sarath Chandra Reddy through his companies?
Shri Surabh Bharadwaj said, “The third question: Why did the BJP hide all these transactions from everyone? Why did the BJP not disclose these facts to the ED, the CBI, and the citizens of India, if they are not guilty?”
These are the three questions that we want the BJP to answer. First, how did they know Sarath Chandra Reddy? Second, why did they take Rs.60 crore (precisely 59.5 crore) from him? Third, why did they hide this information from the ED, the CBI, and the public?
Dialogue and Development Commission, Government of Delhi, Vice Chairperson Shri Jasmine Shah, also questioned the silence of the BJP over the matter. “In a way, by being quiet on this matter, the BJP and its leaders are clearly accepting that we have taken the money from Sarath Chandra Reddy, the kingpin of the liquor policy case, do whatever you want. The BJP cannot even deny anything now, this data is from the Election Commission ‘s website,” he said.
The AAP leader stated how the exposure of this money trail has clearly ended the whole discussion on Delhi’s liquor excise policy case. For the last two years, the AAP president and leaders, along with the media, and the people of the country, have been questioning if there has been a scam of so many crores in the alleged liquor excise policy scam, you (BJP) have been claiming that proceeds of crime have been generated, money is trailed, then why is the money not being found? Where has the money gone?
Shri Jasmine Shah added, “Sarath Chandra Reddy is the only key to this entire episode. He is the key to all the secrets. Ever since his name has come into the picture, the alleged liquor policy case has been solved. This is an open and shut case. It has been exposed how the BJP put Sarath Chandra Reddy in jail in the first place to get an approver. His earlier statements that he has never met Shri Arvind Kejriwal, there is no question of any monetary transactions, changed within six months. The ED made him rot in the jail for six months and pressurized him to change his statements.”
“After six months in jail, he suddenly remembered and said that he had given bribe to Shri Arvind Kejriwal in the liquor excise policy scam. Not only this, they (BJP) made him an approver by pressurizing him to give pre-dictated statements and even recovered Rs.55 crore from him through electoral bonds,” he added.
Taking potshots at the BJP, Shri Jasmine Shah stated, “The mighty party, BJP, might not have the time to answer the questions raised by the AAP in the media, so we will be asking these questions directly from the BJP President Shri JP Nadda through a letter. Through this letter, we will appeal to Shri JP Nadda to answer these three questions publicly, with all the details, facts and proofs. We hope that he will make all this public in front of the country within the next 24 hours.”
The AAP National Chief Spokesperson, Ms. Priyanka Kakkar, charted out the whole liquor excise policy case in Delhi and stated how Sarath Reddy had applied for liquor license under the new excise policy formulated by the AAP. This policy was in operation from November 2021 to July 2022 and Sarath Chandra Reddy was allotted liquor license in five zones in Delhi.
“On 9th November 2022, the ED reached Sarath Chandra Reddy’s house for questioning. On the very next day, 10th November 2022, Sarath Chandra Reddy was arrested by the ED. The BJP’s ED then puts two conditions before Sarath Chandra Reddy to get him out of jail. First, they demanded a donation of Rs.60 crore, and second, they asked him to give a false statement against CM Shri Arvind Kejriwal,” she said.
Sarath Chandra Reddy clearly refused to give a false statement against CM Shri Arvind Kejriwal and reached out to the court. He told the court how the BJP’s ED was pressurizing and torturing him to give a false statement. Sarath also told that the ED was beating him and forcing him to give pre-dictated statements. He was still not granted bail because stringent sections of PMLA were imposed on him.
“After being imprisoned and tortured for around eight months, Sarath Reddy became a government witness and gave a false statement against Shri Arvind Kejriwal. Based on this false statement, the ED was granted the custody of Shri Arvind Kejriwal on 22nd March 2024,” said Priyanka Kakkar.
Connecting the dots, the AAP chief spokesperson stated, “In the last week, after constant rebuke from the Supreme Court, the data of electoral bonds was made public by the SBI. All the possible efforts were made, expensive lawyers were hired to defend the SBI. It was not easy to make this data public, people worked hard, a lot of civil societies participated, and the Supreme Court took a strict stance and made this data public.”
After this new information became public on the evening of 22nd March 2024, it was revealed that Sarath Chandra Reddy, whom the ED was calling the ‘kingpin’ of ‘South Liquor Lobby’, based on whose statement Arvind Kejriwal was sent into custody, BJP had accepted Rs.60 crores from the same Sarath Reddy. The first instalment of this bribe was given five days after the arrest of Sarath Chandra Reddy through electoral bonds, Priyanka Kakkar said.
The National Chief Spokesperson of AAP said if the BJP fails to answer the important questions raised by AAP senior leader Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj, then it is clear that the BJP has been caught red-handed in bribery. She stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party has been caught red-handed, the money trail about which the BJP spokespersons were shouting about for a year came in front of everyone due to the electoral bonds becoming public. Therefore, the AAP demands that Prime Minister Modi should resign with immediate effect, she concluded.
