Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Sunday that he will resign in two days, and will return to the post only after voters express their support for him.
The Aam Aadmi Party chief made the announcement two days after he was released on bail in the Delhi liquor policy case.
Addressing party workers in the national capital on Sunday, Kejriwal said: “After two days, I will resign as the chief minister. And I will not sit on the chief minister’s chair till the people pronounce their verdict.”
Kejriwal demanded that the Delhi Assembly elections be held in November along with the Maharashtra polls. Assembly elections in the national capital are scheduled to be held in February next year.
Kejriwal said that till the Delhi elections are held, another Aam Aadmi Party leader will replace him as the chief minister. A meeting of the party’s MLAs will be held in the next two to three days, during which they will decide who will hold the post, he added.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan granted bail to Kejriwal on Friday on the grounds that the chargesheet had been filed in the case and that the trial was unlikely to be completed in the near future.
Kant held that Kejriwal’s prolonged imprisonment constituted an “unjust deprivation of liberty” but maintained that there were no procedural irregularities in his arrest. Bhuyan, however, said that the chief minister’s arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation was unjustified.
Both the judges, however, remained unanimous in their decision to grant Kejriwal bail.
The bail conditions included Kejriwal not being allowed to visit the chief minister’s office or the Delhi secretariat.
Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on March 21, which is investigating allegations of money laundering in the case based on a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The central agency is looking into allegations of corruption against Kejriwal in the case. The Enforcement Directorate is investigating allegations of money laundering linked to the matter.
The two central agencies have alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party government modified Delhi’s now-scrapped liquor policy by increasing the commission for wholesalers from 5% to 12%. This allegedly facilitated the receipt of bribes from wholesalers who had a substantial market share and turnover.
All Aam Aadmi Party leaders who were arrested in the excise policy case have now received bail. Kejriwal will join the party’s Haryana polls campaign.
‘PR stunt’, claims BJP
Bharatiya Janata Party national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari called Kejriwal’s announcement a “PR stunt”, ANI reported.
Bhandari said: “He [Kejriwal] has understood that his image among the people of Delhi is not of an honest leader but of a corrupt leader…Today Aam Aadmi Party is known across the country as a corrupt party.”
The BJP leader told the news agency that Kejriwal wanted to restore his image through this “PR stunt”. He said: “They [Aam Aadmi Party leaders] have understood today that they are losing the Delhi elections and the people of Delhi cannot vote in their name, so they want to make someone else a scapegoat...”
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