“Should Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal resign or should he run the government from Tihar Jail?” — This is the question that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) plans to ask the people of Delhi in “nukkad meetings”. Durgesh Pathak, an AAP MLA and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) incharge, said on Tuesday that the AAP will hold a “referendum” by reaching out to every household and going to every street across Delhi to take people’s opinion on the matter.
Pathak’s statement came a week after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summoned Arvind Kejriwal in connection with its money laundering probe linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam. Kejriwal had skipped the summons, saying it was “politically motivated”.
AAP leaders fear that the ED will arrest Arvind Kejriwal after questioning him in connection with the case. Pathak said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was decimated by the AAP in Delhi and now it is conspiring to send Kejriwal to jail in a fake case, “thinking he will resign from the chief minister’s post and the AAP will be destroyed”.
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“Everywhere the AAP is contesting elections, the BJP is being completely destroyed. It has understood now that the only way out is to send AAP leaders to jail in a fake case and not let them come out,” Pathak said soon after Kejriwal held a meeting with all AAP councillors on Tuesday.
He said that in the meeting, it was decided that the AAP will reach out to every household in Delhi and ask the public if Kejriwal should resign after he is arrested by the ED or should he run the government from the jail itself.
“The exercise will also be carried out in other parts of the country through public meetings,” he said. The party, however, did not announce any date for the “referendum” or “nukkad meetings”.
During Tuesday’s meeting that went on for one-and-a-half hours, all AAP councillors unanimously urged Kejriwal to not think of resigning even if “Modi ji gets him arrested and run the government from jail to expose conspiracies against him”, Pathak was quoted by news agency PTI as saying.
“Kejriwal listened to the councillors and assured them that he would take a final decision after consulting party leaders and workers in Punjab and other parts of the country,” he said.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh was arrested last month by the ED after an hours-long raid at his residence in connection with its money laundering probe into the alleged scam. Former Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia is already lodged in the Tihar jail in connection with the same case.
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Updated: 08 Nov 2023, 02:51 PM IST
