Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, after a marathon 9-hour questioning by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the liquor policy case, claimed he was pressured to quit the Aam Aadmi Party. The agency officials had apparently implied that he join the BJP, which he flatly refused, he told reporters outside his residence.
“There was talk about excise policy but I was pressured to give in. ‘These cases will go on like this. They will make you CM,’ they said,” Mr Sisodia told reporters. “I told them that I find joy when a rickshawala’s son joins the IIT… Will not buckle under “Operation Lotus”. It is a bogus case,” he said.
In some relief to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which has been bracing for his arrest, the agency has not summoned him for a second session.
Mr Sisodia’s house was subject to multiple searches by the agency in August after it got a go-ahead for investigation from Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena. The Deputy Chief Minister is the prime accused in the case, which involves alleged kickbacks to political leaders by private players in exchange for liquor shop licenses.
AAP has declared that Mr Sisodia will now be arrested in what they termed “political vendetta” of the BJP. The party, AAP alleged, is “scared” about the outcome of the assembly election in Gujarat and wants to stop Mr Sisodia from campaigning in the state.
Party chief and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has claimed that the BJP plans to keep Mr Sisodia in jail till after the Gujarat elections. But no jail can keep his deputy in, he added. “Prison locks will break, Manish Sisodia will be free,” he tweeted in Hindi.
Earlier today, several AAP leaders, including MP Sanjay Singh, were detained after they held a massive protest against the questioning of Manish Sisodia. Around 100 leaders and workers were detained from outside the CBI office.
