AAP has a lot to explain on your excise policy, even if a CBI inquiry is motivated
AAP has a lot to explain on your excise policy, even if a CBI inquiry is motivated
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and 14 others In case of corruption in implementation of Excise Policy 2021-22 in National Capital Region. On Friday, the agency conducted searches at Mr. Sisodia’s house and at several places in the country. Mr Sisodia has said that he is hopeful that the agency will arrest him soon. on 21st July, Lt Governor Vinay Kumar Saxena had recommended a CBI inquiry The Delhi government withdrew after the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government submitted a report alleging “false motives for monetary gains” on the part of the accused in the implementation of the new policy. After the controversial policy launched on November 17, 2021, privatized and liberalized the liquor trade, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government projected a revenue growth of Rs 9,500 crore. The report accuses Mr Sisodia of “deliberate and gross procedural lapses” for giving “undue advantage to liquor licensees” through policy, and receiving bribes through secret routes, which the CBI is probing. AAP has claimed that the new policy has made the liquor business more beneficial to the exchequer and consumers.
The merits of the case remain a matter of investigation, but hardly anyone expects the CBI to be impartial. The agency has been openly misused by the BJP and the Center to target political opponents and states run by the opposition. The BJP has been able to bring its opponents on the defensive through CBI and ED investigations on a regular basis. The irony in this instance is that AAP has been a supporter of strong central laws and central institutions to fight corruption, which has transformed itself into a political party after starting as an anti-corruption campaign platform. Its popularity in Delhi has curiously changed with that of its principal rival, the BJP. While AAP won the last two assembly elections in Delhi, the BJP won all the seven Lok Sabha seats twice during the same period. AAP’s welfare schemes in Delhi helped it replicate its popularity in Punjab where it won power but is now struggling to rule. AAP’s strategy has been to claim all politicians – and politics itself – as a single indestructible entity with the same brush. Its attempts to re-produce the script in Gujarat, the iconic seat of the BJP, where elections are due this year, were bound to invite the wrath of the BJP. But you have a lot to explain. It remains to be seen whether the holy-to-sacred politics crafted by the AAP survives the BJP’s non-prisoner approach, even as it sees the 2024 general election as AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Beach tries to dress up as a competition.