NEW DELHI -- Delhi law minister Jitendra Singh Tomar’s arrest Tuesday afternoon has sharpened the simmering rift between Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government and Narendra Modi’s union government.
HuffPost India spoke with AAP spokesperson Ashutosh shortly after the arrest.
Why has the Delhi Law minister been arrested?
This is nothing but pure vendetta politics. And it is being pursued by none other than the prime minister’s office. The CNG fitness case was reopened by the Delhi government day before yesterday. Many big leaders of the BJP and the Congress are involved in it. Yesterday the (union government) changed the chief of the anti-corruption bureau and filed an FIR against Jitendra Singh Tomar. Today, they arrested Mr. Tomar like a terrorist, without any prior intimation or warrant.
This is nothing but BJP’s revenge against the people of Delhi who handed a humiliating electoral defeat to them and gave an overwhelming mandate to the Aam Aadmi Party. They are trying to scuttle the functioning of the Delhi government.
Why is there a controversy over the appointment of the ACB chief?
There is an existing commissioner of the anti-corruption bureau. His name is S.S. Yadav. He is currently serving. They have now named an officer above him to a post that doesn’t exist—as joint commissioner of ACB. This post doesn’t exist. So the Delhi government has said as much. The appointed officer is the same officer who has tried to implicate Manish Sisodia and Kumar Vishwas in a false case. So it’s clear what their intentions are.
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Now nearly every day the LG and the Delhi government are on a collision course. Isn’t there a kind of constitutional crisis prevailing?
There is no crisis. If there is any, it is being precipitated by the LG at the behest of his godfathers in the Modi government.
Yogendra Yadav has come out and said if Mr. Tomar’s degrees are genuine, why not make them public?
Mr. Yadav is not naive. He knows very well that when a matter is sub-judice, as Mr Tomar’s case is, you produce the documents in court, not in public. Mr. Tomar’s case is up for hearing in August. A lower court has set a date.
Does the party stand by Mr. Tomar?
Yes, completely.
What is the game plan now in the light of such stand offs nearly every day?
This is nothing but an an attempt to destabilise the AAP government. We have known all along that it is not going to be an easy battle. We will deliberate on what actions are necessary and resist these efforts.
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