On Saturday (17th February), Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal skipped physically appearing in response to the summons by the Rouse Avenue court. The Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) complaint against the Chief Minister for repeatedly skipping summons for questioning in the Delhi excise policy case was set to be addressed in court. Arvind Kejriwal had earlier moved a confidence motion in the Delhi assembly seeking trust vote on the day of the court summons.
The Court summoned Kejriwal following a complaint by the ED, saying that the CM had failed to attend five of their summons for questioning regarding the liquor excise policy case. The matter is now listed for 16th March.
According to reports, Arvind Kejriwal appeared through video conferencing ahead of the assembly session. Kejriwal expressed his “intention” to physically attend the summons today but cited his inability to do so due to the confidence motion and the budget session in the Assembly. Just a day earlier, Kejriwal initiated a motion of confidence in the Assembly, asserting a conspiracy aimed at destabilising his government. The AAP convener is summoned for the sixth time by the central probe agency and he is supposed to appear on Monday 19th February.
This is the sixth time that Arvind Kejriwal has skipped a summons regarding the Delhi Liqour Scam. He skipped five summons by ED and this one by the court. Every time he cited different reasons for missing the summons. Kejriwal has so far skipped five previous summons issued by the ED on 2nd February, 18th January, 3rd January, 2nd November 2023 and 22nd December 2023, calling them “illegal and politically motivated”.
The ED wants to record Kejriwal’s statement in the case on issues like the formulation of policy, meetings held before it was finalised, and allegations of bribery. While skipping the fifth summons issued by the ED on 2nd February, Kejriwal termed it “illegal”, saying he was ready to cooperate but the agency intended to arrest him and stop him from election campaigning.
“All five notices sent to me (by the ED) are illegal and invalid in the eyes of the law. Whenever such general, non-specific notices were sent by the ED in the past, they were quashed and declared invalid by courts. These notices are being sent as part of a political conspiracy,” Kejriwal said after skipping the fifth notice.
A day after Kejriwal skipped the fifth summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate, the agency approached a Delhi Court against him for “non-compliance with the summons”.
Arvind Kejriwal skipped the summons dated 18th January saying that he was scheduled to go to Goa and meet his party workers. ED had issued a summons to Kejriwal on 13th January, asking him to appear before it on 18th January.
Kejriwal had previously refused to appear before the investigation agency on two occasions, on November 2 and December 21, opting instead to campaign for assembly elections and attend a 10-day Vipassana meditation camp on the two respective occasions.
Two senior AAP leaders–Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh–are already under judicial custody in the case. Sisodia, who was the then Delhi Deputy Chief Minister, was arrested by the CBI on 26th February 2023 following several rounds of questioning, and on 5th October 2023, the ED arrested Singh, who is a Rajya Sabha member from AAP.
