NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party on Friday aggressively defended its health minister, who said he was being “hounded” for his effort to get unauthorised colonies regularised in Delhi.
The party said that the decision of the Ministry of Home Affairs to let the CBI prosecute Jain was a “sadistic” action by the Narendra Modi-led Central government and it was against the poor people of Delhi.
“The Modi government fears huge political loss due to the upliftment and development works in these unauthorised colonies, and thus has been targeting the minister through various agencies. Urban Development Minister Satyendar Jain is the minister in charge for these development works. As a result, the Modi government has unleashed a series of attacks on him and the developments of last evening are just another attempt to bog him down” AAP said in a statement.
Defending Jain, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, “The case against Satyendar Jain is to scare us, Modiji has come back from abroad. He thinks people living in unauthorized colonies dirty the national capital. But we are making drains, roads, sewers and water facilities in these colonies. We will make them” Kejriwal tweeted.
“Ministry of Home Affairs says I tried to regularise unauthorised colonies. Yes, I’ve done that, it was part of our manifesto. They say I’ve become richer from this, that’s not true. Modi doesn’t want people of unauthorised colonies to live in Delhi,” Jain said in the morning.
On Thursday, the MHA granted sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation to prosecute Jain in a disproportionate assets case registered by the agency in August 2017.
“In the name of unauthorised colonies, Satyendar Jain bought benami land. Papers pertaining to the benami property have been recovered from him. In the last four years they have not been able to regularise any unauthorised colony. Now, when a case has been registered, they are giving the excuse of colonies,” said former Delhi minister Kapil Mishra, who accused CM Kejriwal of taking a bribe through Jain a year ago.