Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has decided to keep his date with Vipassana, giving summons by the Enforcement Directorate a miss for the second time, as reported by News18 on Tuesday.
At around 1.40pm on Wednesday, Kejriwal left his residence for the airport from where he, along with chief minister Bhagwant Mann, will leave for Punjab. Kejriwal will attend the retreat in Punjab.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued fresh summons to Kejriwal on December 17, asking him to appear before it on December 21. However, the AAP national convenor had a pre-scheduled meditation retreat from December 19-30. Kejriwal was expected to leave for Punjab on Tuesday after the INDIA meet but since he got late in the evening, his departure was postponed for the 20th.
On Wednesday morning, AAP MPs Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak reached Civil Lines to meet the Delhi chief minister for a brief while for directions on issues to be tackled during his absence. Kejriwal has been an avid Vipassana practitioner and is known to have made time for the meditative practice almost every year.
This is the second time that Kejriwal has given the ED summons a miss. When he was first asked to appear before the investigating agency on November 2, the chief minister had chosen to campaign in Madhya Pradesh on the same day and challenged the summons, asking for the same to be withdrawn. In his letter to the ED, he had called the summons “vague and unsubstantiated”, “politically motivated” and had asked for clarity on the grounds on which he had been summoned.
It now remains to be seen how the Enforcement Directorate will respond to the chief minister not honouring its summons for the second time. The AAP’s legal team is expected to send a formal reply to the ED soon.
Key AAP faces Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and communications in-charge Vijay Nair have been behind bars, ranging from periods of more than three months to over a year, with the country’s top court denying them bail. Sisodia, Singh and Nair are behind bars on charges of money laundering linked to the alleged Delhi Excise scam.
Within the AAP, the dominant apprehension is that the party chief will eventually face an arrest, and its strategists are fighting the situation legally and politically. Party functionaries have been on the ground with forms, collecting the signatures of those who feel that Kejriwal should continue to remain chief minister even if he is arrested and not be trapped in the BJP’s conspiracy.
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