NEW DELHI:
Senior AAP Leader and Cabinet Minister in the Kejriwal government Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj asserts that the arrest of AAP National Convenor and Delhi CM Shri Arvind Kejriwal during the Lok Sabha elections is a deliberate conspiracy aimed at silencing the strongest opposition voice in the country. He stated that if Shri Arvind Kejriwal were free, he would have actively campaigned for the INDIA Alliance nationwide.
Senior AAP Leader Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj condemns the actions of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), highlighting their failure to produce any evidence against Shri Arvind Kejriwal despite a two-year investigation, suggesting a sinister motive behind the arrest. He denounces Shri Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest as an assault on the democratic system and a direct violation of the principle of equal rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters, senior AAP leader and Cabinet Minister Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj said that on April 29, the Supreme Court will hear the petition filed by CM Shri Arvind Kejriwal challenging his arrest. In this regard, Shri Arvind Kejriwal presented his side before the Supreme Court through an affidavit. In the affidavit, Shri Arvind Kejriwal said that it’s not a mere coincidence that when the biggest election of the country are taking place in the country, the elections of the Parliament, the elections to elect the Prime Minister, and the model code of conduct has been announced by the Election Commission, and within a gap of 5 days, the National Convenor of the one of the main opposition party of this country, Shri Arvind Kejriwal, was arrested in a false and frivolous case.
The Senior AAP Leader mentioned that in his affidavit, Shri Arvind Kejriwal has said about ED and CBI that the job of the investigating agencies is to present the truth before the court. It is not the principle of ED and CBI to prove Arvind Kejriwal guilty by any means, but the way CBI and ED conducted their proceedings and evidence that Shri Arvind Kejriwal has presented in that regard, prove it otherwise. If CBI and ED got 1 lakh pages of documents and 80,000 of them are in favor of Shri Arvind Kejriwal and AAP, then those 80000 documents were not presented before the court, only those documents which were taken by pressurizing people, by putting them in jail, by luring people with bail, by luring people with pardon, by luring people with ticket to contest elections from NDA, only those testimonies were presented before the court by ED and CBI.
“These witnesses had admitted in their previous 6-8 testimonies that they never met Shri Arvind Kejriwal and Shri Arvind Kejriwal has nothing to do with this excise policy. All those testimonies were hidden from the court and only those testimonies which were taken from those people by torturing them under pressure were presented before the court by ED and CBI,” he added.
Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj continued, “The Constitution has not given this right to ED and CBI. It is the job of ED and CBI to present all the facts whether in favor and against before the court, whatever facts they have received. If ED and CBI hide the facts in favor and present only those facts before the court which have been made under pressure and false statements have been taken against Shri Arvind Kejriwal, then how will the court be able to take an impartial decision, Shri Arvind Kejriwal has also mentioned this in his affidavit. We are sure that to save democracy in this country and to protect the election system, the Supreme Court will definitely allow Shri Arvind Kejriwal to campaign.”
The Senior AAP Leader shared that for nearly 2 years, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have been investigating this case, issuing dozens of notices. However, in the past two years, neither the ED nor the CBI has been able to present a single piece of evidence against Shri Arvind Kejriwal. “What compelled them to arrest the National Convenor of the country’s foremost and strongest opposition party just before the Lok Sabha elections, when even a small amount of evidence was not found in two years. This is a direct attack on the country’s democratic system. The principle of equality, which is a significant part of India’s Constitution, is gravely violated by the arrest of Shri Arvind Kejriwal,” he affirmed.
“Through the arrest of Shri Arvind Kejriwal, a conspiracy has been hatched to stop him from campaigning for the AAP in the biggest election of the country. If Shri Arvind Kejriwal had been out of jail, he would not only have campaigned for AAP but would have gone to campaign for Shri Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra, for Shri Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, for Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, and for Congress in Karnataka. Because Shri Arvind Kejriwal is the most vocal voice of the opposition and if he had been out of jail, he would have gone to campaign for all the parties of the INDIA Alliance. For this reason, Shri Arvind Kejriwal has been arrested by implicating him in a false case in an unconstitutional manner as part of a conspiracy,” the AAP Leader stated.
“Shri Arvind Kejriwal talks to people in the language of common man and directly asks the questions of the public to the central government, directly challenges the Prime Minister. Such leaders are rare in the opposition and by putting such a leader in jail just before the elections, a conspiracy has been hatched by the BJP-ruled central government to weaken the voice of the opposition,”Shri Saurabh Bharadwaj concluded.
