Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday evening in connection with the alleged liquor policy case and in the Delhi Jal Board case. The ED officials raided Kejriwal’s house and recorded his statements before taking him into custody later in the evening. He skipped nine summons served by the agency and contended that they were politically motivated and illegal.
This high-profile arrest comes close on heels after the Delhi High Court rejected Kejriwal’s plea against coercive action by the agency which served him several summons in the last one year to attend for interrogation over the irregularities in the excise policy formulated by the Delhi government in 2021. Kejriwal received a setback even in the Supreme Court when it refused to list his urgent appeal for hearing on Thursday.
The ED and CBI have already arrested several political bigwigs and businessmen in connection with this contentious liquor case which has been the cynosure of the nation in the last two years. Recently, Telangana MLC Kavitha Kalvakuntla was arrested by the ED. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is already in the custody of the probe agencies.
Meanwhile, Kejriwal became the first sitting Chief Minister of independent India to be arrested while in power. While leaders such as Lalu Prasad Yadav, Jayalalithaa, and Hemant Soren were also arrested while they were the chief ministers of their respective states, they resigned before they were taken into custody by probe agencies.
Arvind Kejriwal will be produced before a special PMLA court on Friday. A Supreme Court hearing on Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest is also likely to take place today.
In 2012, he launched the Aam Aadmi Party and entered the political scene in style. In 2013, he assumed office as the Chief Minister of Delhi and resigned 49 days later over his inability to mobilize support for his proposed anti-corruption legislation. In the 2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly elections, AAP registered a thumping victory.
Again in the 2020 elections, AAP re-emerged victorious and retained the power in Delhi, following which, Kejriwal was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Delhi for the third time in a row. Outside Delhi, his party registered another major victory in the 2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly election. In India, Kejriwal is the most followed Chief Minister on Twitter.