Manish Sisodia has applied for bail in the Delhi liquor policy case
Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia has applied for bail a day before his CBI custody ends in the Delhi liquor policy case. Mr Sisodia will be produced before the CBI court tomorrow at 2 pm.
The former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister, who held a range of portfolios from finance to education, will ask the court to hear his bail request if the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) does not seek to keep him with them any longer, sources said.
Mr Sisodia faces corruption allegation in framing a liquor policy for the national capital, which was scrapped after Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena flagged it to the CBI.
Sources said Mr Sisodia was not cooperating with the investigation. He has failed to explain at least six contentious provisions in the liquor policy that were not part of the first draft.
A day after his arrest, Mr Sisodia had challenged the CBI's move in the Supreme Court. The court, however, told him he should have gone to the high court, after which Mr Sisodia withdrew his application and said he will go to the trial court.
In Mr Sisodia's absence, his basket of portfolios has been distributed between the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Raaj Kumar Anand and Kailash Gahlot. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has also recommended AAP MLAs Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to be appointed ministers.
Mr Sisodia is the second Delhi minister to be arrested after Satyendar Jain, who faces money laundering charges, in less than a year. Both are trusted lieutenants of Mr Kejriwal, a former bureaucrat who founded the AAP and went to war against successive central governments since the party's inception in 2012.
Mr Sisodia's arrest is expected to hit the AAP's plans to contest in the elections in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh due later this year. It could also tie up Mr Kejriwal, the face of the party, to governing Delhi.