AAP Rajya Sabha member Sandeep Pathak.
| Photo Credit: File Photo
Senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sandeep Pathak on Friday said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is being held as a “political prisoner” by the “dictatorial Modi government”, which is trying its best to prevent the CM from raising his voice.
In response, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said that calling Mr. Kejriwal a political prisoner is an insult to freedom fighters and detainees during the Emergency. He asked Mr. Pathak to apologise.
Mr. Kejriwal is currently lodged in Tihar Jail in a corruption case lodged against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy ‘scam’.
AAP has accused the BJP and the Lieutenant-Governor of conspiring to “kill” the CM by “keeping him in jail” despite his blood sugar levels dropping drastically on 26 occasions between June 3 and July 7. However, Raj Niwas had last week written to the Delhi Chief Secretary, saying Mr. Kejriwal, a diabetic, might be resorting to “wilful low-calorie intake” by “deliberately” avoiding the diet prescribed by doctors.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Pathak said the “fluctuations” in the CM’s sugar levels “is a matter of great concern as he is a popularly elected Chief Minister on whom the political future of this country depends”.
He added, “The tendencies of dictators are well known. They take someone prisoner out of political animosity to silence them. Today, Arvind Kejriwal is a political prisoner, and efforts are being made to scare him. But he is not going to be afraid”.
The AAP leader added there is a need to save the country and that the INDIA bloc’s proposed demonstration at Jantar Mantar on July 30 over Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s “declining health” was a step in this direction.
In response, Mr. Kapoor said that diabetes is a serious disease but it cannot be a mandatory condition for bail as it is medically manageable and hundreds of jailed prisoners have diabetes. “The problem with people like Sandeep Pathak and his party colleagues is that they consider politics a profession and, so, they don’t find anything wrong with Kejriwal and [former Deputy CM Manish] Sisodia accepting kickbacks,” he added.