NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday failed to appear before the Enforcement Directorate and instead sent a letter to the agency stating that its summons is “vague, motivated and unsustainable in law”. He demanded its recall.
Kejriwal flew off to Madhya Pradesh for election campaign. He said the summons was politically motivated and to prevent him from campaigning in poll-bound states. The ED had summoned Kejriwal for questioning in the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy case and to record his statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. His party colleagues Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh are in custody in the case. Sisodia was recently denied bail by the Supreme Court.
“The said summons is not clear as to the capacity in which I am being summoned i.e. as a witness or a suspect in the above-mentioned case… (It) does not specify whether I am being summoned as an individual or in my official capacity as Chief Minister of Delhi or as National Convenor of AAP and appears to be in the nature of a fishing and roving inquiry,” his letter to the ED read.
An individual can at best ignore the ED’s summons thrice. After that the agency can seek a non-bailable arrest warrant against him/her. The ED says the excise policy allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers in exchange for bribes, a charge refuted by the AAP. The policy was ly scrapped and the Delhi Lt governor recommended a CBI probe, following which the ED registered a case under the PMLA.