NEW DELHI:A day after a splinter faction of the AAP accused the party of receiving four cheques of `50 lakh each on the midnight of April 15 last year from four dubious companies, a battery of party leaders defending themselves attacked the BJP and dared the Centre to arrest their leader Arvind Kejriwal.
The leaders also said they had written letter to the Chief Justice of India(CJI) urged him to constitute a Supreme Court-monitored SIT probe into the funding of the BJP, the Congress and AAP themselves. The move by the AAP leaders came after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launched a scathing on Kejriwal’s party saying it was caught red-handed for receiving funds from companies which did not have any business and said the “authorities would probe the issue when tax returns were filed”.
“Now, if you are perhaps trapped in an incident of this kind, this is no position that you should start blaming other political parties and try and deflect the agenda,” Jaitley said.
On the AAP seeking an SC-monitored probe into the funding of the three major parties, Jaitley said, “These are all diversionary tactics..” Hitting back at Jaitley, Kejriwal dared the Finance Minister to arrest him if he had done anything wrong. “The government is in your hands. All the police is in your hands, the IB, ED and I-T Department are with you. If you have the courage, why don’t you arrest me. They don’t have the courage,” theformer Delhi CM told an election meeting.
Kejriwal also wrote to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and BJP president Amit Shah in this regard “with the hope of eliciting a positive response".