Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 22: The arrested Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s former mentor social activist Anna Hazare has castigated the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief for his misdeeds “to make more money.”
In his first reaction after Mr Kejriwal’s arrest on Thursday night by the Enforcement Directorate, Mr Hazare said, “Kejriwal got arrested due to his deeds. Had he not done anything, there was no question of his being arrested. Whatever happens now should happen according to the law,” the activist added.
“I told him many times to avoid liquor, but he made the policy for more money,” was one of the many scathing remarks by Mr Hazare on the arrest of his former mentee, Mr Kejriwal in the alleged Delhi liquor policy scam. While several opposition leaders have come out in support of Mr Kejriwal, Anna Hazare has said the AAP should not have indulged in preparing the liquor policy.
“I am very saddened, that a man like Arvind Kejriwal, who used to work with me and had raised his voice against liquor, today he is preparing liquor policy,” he said. “But what can be done? He got arrested for his deeds,” he remarked.
Anna Hazare was the face of the anti-corruption movement in 2011, from which the AAP emerged. At the time, while choosing to stay out of the party — avoiding electoral politics — he gave it his “blessings”. But he has since criticised the party on several points. Mr Kejriwal and his party have avoided direct counters.
The ED’s case is that the Delhi liquor policy 2021-22 provided an exceptionally high-profit margin of 12 per cent for wholesalers and nearly 185 per cent for retailers. Of the 12 per cent, 6 per cent was to be recovered from wholesalers as kickbacks for AAP leaders, and the “South Group” allegedly gave ₹ 100 crore in advance to another accused, Vijay Nair, who was linked to the AAP.
Mr Hazare has in the past too spoken against the policy. He had written a letter to Mr Kejriwal in 2022 expressing his “pain” over the policy. “This is the first time I am writing to you since you became chief minister, because I am pained at recent news reports about your government’s liquor policy. Like liquor, power too intoxicates. You are intoxicated by power, it seems,” Mr Hazare wrote in his letter to Mr Kejriwal.
