New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday distanced itself from veteran Ajay Maken’s views that the party should not support Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who has been questioned by the CBI in the liquor scam.
“Central agencies are being misused only against opposition leaders and to break parties. Wherever it is happening we are against it. I have told party leaders that we will fight the misuse of central agencies. Wherever central agencies are being used against an opposition leader, we will stand with him,” AICC in-charge of Delhi Shakti Sinh Gohil told ETV Bharat.
The remarks have come days after former Delhi unit chief Ajay Maken and Punjab CLP Partap Singh Bajwa slammed Kejriwal and urged the Congress not to support the AAP leader. The AAP defeated Congress in Delhi in 2013 and in Punjab in 2022. Both Maken and Bajwa had expressed concern that Kejriwal, who had come to power in Delhi on an anti-corruption agenda, had actually used money made through corrupt means to dent the Congress in Delhi, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Goa polls. Maken had even urged party leaders who are lawyers also not to represent Kejriwal in courts.
“There are local fights but there is no issue after I spoke with my leaders. Congress has internal democracy. There is no gag on leaders. We are against corruption. When we were in power, we never objected to any probe. If the courts decide something, we will see,” said Gohil. Days before Kejriwal was questioned by the CBI on April 16, the AAP convenor had spoken to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge over the phone to seek his support in the matter.
Over the past years, the Congress has been leading various opposition parties to allege that the central agencies were being misused to target the opposition leaders. According to party insiders, Kharge is trying hard to forge opposition unity ahead of the 2024 national polls and does not want the issue of misuse of central agencies to divide the opposition ranks.
The party insiders pointed out that during the Budget Session of Parliament, the AAP used to attend the strategy meetings of the 19 opposition parties that Kharge used to host daily in his capacity as the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha. Because of this unity, the opposition could present itself as a block and demand a JPC probe into the Adani-Hindenburg issue.
Also, Kejriwal had slammed the BJP over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha on March 24, a day after he was convicted and sentenced in a 2019 defamation case involving PM Modi’s surname. Earlier, the Congress leaders had attacked both Kejriwal and his former deputy Manish Sisodia, who is in jail in the liquor scam, over the issue of corruption.
Party spokespersons Supriya Shrinate and Alka Lamba and Delhi unit chief Anil Chaudhary had said that AAP had not spoken against ED when the agency had questioned Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case in 2022 and had claimed that CBI action against Sisodia was right.
