Dares BJP government at Centre to act against Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan
New Delhi : In a desperate gambit, aimed at regaining the lost moral ground, Delhi Chief Minister on Friday sacked his Environment and Food and Supplies Minister Asim Ahmed Khan on charges of corruption.
Khan has been accused of colluding with a builder; to buttress his claim, Kejriwal played an audio clip of a purported one-hour chat in which the minister is heard asking the builder for a bribe of Rs 6 lakhs. The details of the ‘sting’ – the first of its kind where a minister has been targeted by his own government – were unraveled at a live press conference.
“We had received a complaint on Thursday night that the construction of a building in Khan’s constituency was stopped and money was demanded from the builder,’’ the
Chief Minister said. He also held out a similar warning to other corrupt ministers and bureaucrats. But the thrust of Kejriwal’s statement was that the fight against corruption is back on the agenda, possibly because the party was beginning to feel that the moral ground was slipping from under its feet.
Not content with that, the Chief Minister asked the BJP government at the Centre to follow suit and dared it to remove Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for their alleged irregularities in the Lalit Modi and Vyapam cases, respectively.
The Aam Aadmi Party has been dogged by controversies since it assumed power: In June, Jitender Tomar resigned as the law minister after he was accused of faking his college degree. Likewise, AAP leader Somanth Bharti is facing allegations of domestic abuse and is currently out on bail.
The Congress and the BJP both ridiculed AAP and asserted that one swallow does not make a summer. “Kejriwal is making an event of the sacking,” said union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Congress leader Ajay Maken commented that a party which was formed to fight graft has lost one third of its ministers in less than eight months on the altar of corruption.
The sacked minister, on his part, said, “It’s a political conspiracy against me. I will come out clean. I was asked to resign by my party and I have tendered my resignation. I am a businessman and this conversation might be related to one of my personal business deals.”
Both Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was just a publicity stunt by the AAP government to gain mileage. “Kejriwal pulled a stunt by sacking the
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