Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, received a seventh summons to appear before the Directorate of Enforcement on Thursday. The Delhi Chief Minister has reportedly been asked to appear before the ED on February 26. The Delhi Chief Minister was served a sixth summons by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on February 14 in connection with the money laundering investigation into purported irregularities in the Delhi Excise Policy 2021–22 case. The ED requested that the Chief Minister appear in court on February 19. The Delhi Chief Minister was served with a new summons after he ignored the fifth one on February 2.
Five prior ED summonses were sent out on February 2, January 18, January 3, November 2, and December 22. Arvind Kejriwal ignored them all, claiming they were “illegal and politically motivated.” The Enforcement Department (ED) seeks to record Kejriwal’s statement in relation to matters such as policy formulation, pre-finalization meetings, and bribery allegations. Kejriwal called the fifth summons from the ED “illegal,” claiming that although he was willing to comply, their goal was to arrest him and prevent him from running for office.
“All five notices sent to me (by the ED) are illegal and invalid in the eyes of the law. Whenever such general, non-specific notices were sent by the ED in the past, they were quashed and declared invalid by courts. These notices are being sent as part of a political conspiracy,” Kejriwal said after skipping the fifth notice.
A day after Kejriwal skipped the fifth summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate, the agency on February 3 approached a Delhi Court against him for “non-compliance with the summons”.
The case is based on a First Information Report (FIR) filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which claims that there were numerous irregularities in the creation and execution of the Delhi excise policy (2021–2022). The policy was rescinded in response to accusations of corruption. In its sixth indictment, which was submitted on December 2, 2023, the ED accused AAP leader Sanjay Singh and his suspected assistant Sarvesh Mishra of using bribes totaling Rs 45 crore obtained through the policy to support their campaign for the Goa assembly elections in 2022.
Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, two prominent AAP leaders, are already detained by the court in this case. After multiple rounds of questioning, the CBI arrested Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi at the time, on February 26. The ED then arrested Singh, a member of the Rajya Sabha, on October 5.
