New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday summoned Delhi Minister Kailash Gahlot for questioning in the excise policy case, days after the central probe agency arrested Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Gahlot, an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Najafgarh, is the minister for transport, home, and law in the Delhi government, who has been asked to appear for questioning in the case and get his statement recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), sources told PTI.
The 49-year-old politician said, “I will join the probe today.”
The central agency had mentioned Gahlot’s name in its chargesheet and in the context of Vijay Nair, the AAP communications in-charge previously arrested in the case. It noted that Nair resided in the government bungalow designated for Gahlot, who ”ironically” lives in Najafgarh in southwest Delhi.
With Manish Sisodia, the former deputy chief minister of Delhi and Sanjay Singh, AAP Rajya Sabha MP, already lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail in connection with the case, Kailash Gahlot, Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj are the only prominent AAP leaders who are not in jail.
Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the ED on March 21, becoming the first sitting CM to be arrested in independent India. The CM is in ED custody till April 1.
Kejriwal argued his own case after he was produced before the Rouse Avenue Court of Special Judge Kaweri Baweja at the end of his remand in ED custody earlier this week. He told the court that the ED had two motives: to create a smokescreen to crush the AAP, and to create an extortion racket.
There are two cases that have been registered in relation to the excise policy — one by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the other by the ED on alleged money laundering. The case stemmed from a report presented by Naresh Kumar, the Chief Secretary of Delhi. to Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena in July 2022, highlighting purported procedural shortcomings in the formulation of the Delhi Excise Policy for the year 2021-22.
The policy was enacted in November 2021 but subsequently revoked in July 2022.
