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As the former Delhi Chief Minister gets discharged in the excise policy case, Congress leader Abhishek Dutt on Thursday said that Arvind Kejriwal gets relief from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) whenever elections come, implying that it was Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) way of "election management" to divide the vote.
He said that during the 2024 Haryana assembly elections, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Kejriwal was also released from jail, a move that "directly harmed" Congress in the assembly polls. Speaking with ANI, Dutt said, "In September 2024, he (Arvind Kejriwal) was released from jail. The CBI court granted him bail. Just a month before the elections, he announced that he would contest all 90 seats in Haryana, which directly harmed the Congress party. If Kejriwal hadn't contested the elections in Haryana at the behest of the BJP, the BJP would never have formed a government in Haryana." "This is a trend whenever elections come, Kejriwal gets relief from the CBI, and the CBI starts chasing the Congress. This is the BJP's way of election management. Why didn't they investigate the DTC scam? Why didn't they investigate the Mohalla Clinic scam? They had the entire list. This is just an election stunt, because they want to divide Congress votes in the upcoming elections," he added. Meanwhile, Congress leader Pawan Khera referred to AAP as the BJP's "convenient allies" as he suggested that this move comes to fulfil its "obsessive goal of Congress-free India". "Elections are coming. So the script is entirely predictable. There will be a sudden surge in cases against Congress leaders, P Chidambaram is being dragged back into the headlines again because elections are due in Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, on the other side, the proceedings against their "convenient allies" in the Aam Aadmi Party and others will quietly fizzle out in view of the Gujarat and Punjab elections," he said in a post on X. "The BJP is not a political party. It is a wish-fulfilling serpent with the power to change its form. It has only one obsessive goal: to defeat the Congress and create a Congress-free India. For this goal, it can stoop to any level," he added. Holding that the prosecution had failed to disclose "even the threshold of a prima facie suspicion, far less the grave suspicion" required for framing of charges, a Special Court in Delhi discharged all 23 accused in the CBI case relating to the Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. In a strongly worded order, Special Judge (PC Act) Jitender Singh of the Rouse Avenue Court ruled that the prosecution's case was "legally infirm, unsustainable, and unfit to proceed any further in law". The Court observed that when the material collected by the agency was tested on the touchstone of admissibility, relevance and probative value, "the appearance of a coherent conspiracy dissolves," exposing the allegations as being founded on inadmissible material and post-facto reconstruction. The FIR in the case was registered in August 2022 following a complaint by Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, alleging that the now-scrapped excise policy was designed to favour select liquor licensees by reducing licence fees and fixing profit margins, resulting in kickbacks and losses to the exchequer. Meanwhile, the CBI has approached the Delhi High Court challenging the trial court's order. (ANI)
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