A furious Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted this morning that his office had been raided by the CBI and directed an extraordinarily sharp attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him a “coward and psychopath”.
AAP claims that officials have been stopped from entering the Chief Minister’s office on the third floor of the Delhi Secretariat and the CBI hasn’t given any reason.
The CBI denies raiding or sealing the Chief Minister’s office and claims that it was searching the office and home of a senior bureaucrat in the Chief Minister’s team, Rajender Kumar, accused of corruption in computer purchases.
As political outrage over the raid reached Parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha: “No one from the CBI has entered Kejriwal’s room, the case is not connected to his tenure. The search is against an officer.”
Accusing the finance minister of “lying”, Mr Kejriwal refused to buy the statement, calling Rajender Kumar “one of my most trusted officers”. He questioned why CBI never informed the Delhi government before searching the floor of the Chief Minister’s office.
“CBI lying. My own office raided. Files of CM office are being looked into. Let Modi say which file he wants?” Mr Kejriwal tweeted, adding that “Rajender is an excuse.”
The BJP called Mr Kejriwal’s attack on the PM “abominable”. Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said: “CBI doing its work and not fair to blame government. It has become a fashion to blame the PM for everything.”
AAP has declared war on the Centre.
“This is an undeclared state of emergency. The Modi government wants to turn our country into a police state where there are no civil rights,” said AAP leader Ashish Khetan.
Since Mr Kejriwal’s party took power in February after winning a massive mandate in Delhi, it has been locked in a running feud with the central government over the control of important functions in Delhi like law and order, police and land.
Days ago, when Mr Kejriwal was asked about vendetta politics in connection with the National Herald case against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, he had told NDTV: “There is definitely a vendetta against AAP. Five of our MLAs have been arrested on flimsy grounds.”
