Targeting the Central Bureau of Investigation again, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia accused the agency of seizing documents “unrelated” to the agency’s probe agains
Targeting the Central Bureau of Investigation again, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia accused the agency of seizing documents “unrelated” to the agency’s probe against city’s principal secretary Rajendra Kumar. Mr Kejriwal also launched a fresh attack on Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, saying he had “misled” Parliament by saying that the CBI had not raided the chief minister’s office.
“The CBI kept reading DDCA file in my office. They wud hv seized it. But after my media briefing, they left it. Not clear if they took a copy. Docs seized from my office. No relation to allegations being probed. Item 7-file movement register of last one month,” he said in a series of tweets.
Addressing a press conference, Mr Sisodia wondered why the CBI had allegedly seized “file movement register of November-December” and “three files of transport department.” “What is the connection The CBI also scrutinised files of DDCA. They even planned to seize them, but did not do so after the chief minister raised the issue,” Mr Sisodia claimed.
Mr Kejriwal through his tweets also suggested that Mr Jaitley was worried about the Delhi government’s probe into the functioning of the DDCA. Mr Jaitley had on Tuesday dismissed the allegations against him as “rubbish.” Mr Kejriwal also uploaded an image of a document listing the files allegedly taken away by the CBI from the Secretariat during its day-long raid on Tuesday.
The CBI had raided the office of Mr Kejriwal’s principal secretary Rajendra Kumar in a corruption case triggering a fresh face-off between the AAP and Centre.
Mr Kejriwal claimed his office was raided, which was denied by the CBI as well as Mr Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha where the Opposition created an uproar. The chief minister claimed he was, in fact, the target and that Mr Kumar was just an excuse. Mr Sisodia, who has alleged that the CBI raided a room where the chief minister’s files and affidavits were kept, stood by his claim and said that the Parliament was being “misled” with “wrong facts.”
“If the raid was in chief minister’s office, it was in his office. One cannot say that a clerk’s office was raided and not the chief minister’s,” Mr Sisodia said.
The ruling AAP is “not scared” of any inquiry, but wants the “independence” of the CBI, not one which is a “slave” of the Centre and acts on its instructions, he said.
“Whatever party is ruling in the Centre if it uses CBI against the opponent, how can it be independent ” he asked.
“If you see the seizure memo, the kind of files that were seized, including the Cabinet decisions and file movement registers, I do not understand the connection they have with the alleged scams for which the raids were conducted,” he added.
The CBI rebutted the AAP government’s charges and justified its action, saying the list of all the files seized will be placed before the court even as it continued questioning Mr Kejriwal’s principal secretary in the corruption case.
