"Couldn't Have Taken Place Without Arvind Kejriwal's Approval": BJP On Liquor Scam

The BJP on Tuesday sharpened its attack on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over the excise policy case, claiming that such a "massive scam" could not have taken place with his clear approval.

"Jaisi karni waisi bharni (you reap what you sow)," BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told a press conference, a day after the Enforcement Directorate summoned Kejriwal on November 2 for questioning in a money laundering case linked to the alleged excise policy scam.

Dismissing the AAP's allegations that the Central government was trying to finish it off, he said it was the Kejriwal-led party which was finishing itself off with its "misdeeds, corruption and scams".

Mr Prasad claimed the BJP has nothing to do with central probe agencies' action against the AAP and that the legal process was following its own course in the matter. "What agencies do is none of our concern. It is for them to decide." 

He rhetorically asked did the BJP tell them to frame such an excise policy that "gives them commission and monopoly to select firms".

"Such a massive scam could not have taken place without Kejriwal's clear approval," the former Union minister claimed.

He reiterated the charges that the AAP allowed a "southern lobby" to dictate its excise policy so that the party could use the money for election purposes in Goa to fulfil its aspiration of becoming a national party.

What the lobby dictated was accepted by the Delhi government as its excise policy and the one earlier formed by a group of ministers was sought to be changed, he alleged.

Mr Prasad claimed that the AAP has been the "biggest letdown" in India's political history, noting that its rise was marked by a lot of hope as many non-political people also got associated with it along with the "baba", a reference to Anna Hazare.

They all withdrew, he said, and asked why the likes of Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Shazia Ilmi and Kiran Bedi, the last two of them now with the BJP, left the party after being closely associated with its rise.

The AAP has given people a big betrayal as they turned out to be entirely different from what they promised, he claimed.

Delhi's former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and AAP MP Sanjay Singh have been arrested by the ED in the excise policy case so far. This is the first time that Kejriwal has been summoned by the ED. He was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the case in April.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)