The Aam Aadmi Party stepped up its attack on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday by revealing documents that allegedly prove corruption charges against him. It said the minister had been involved in financial irregularities at the Delhi & District Cricket Association for the last 14 years.
However, Jaitley refuted the allegations in a Facebook post titled “Falsehood as Free Speech” and called the party’s accusations “untruth and defamation.” He said, “I left the cricket administration in 2013. By referring to some facts from 2014 and 2015, he [Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal] can’t drag me in.”
Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani also rubbished the AAP’s claims. She said that the report AAP was showing was from an investigation launched by the DDCA itself, and not by the party. “The Bharatiya Janata Party resolutely stands behind Jaitley and condemns the malicious attempt of the AAP to deflect public attention from a corrupt officer,” she said.
The DDCA too reiterated that the charges against Jaitley were without any substance, PTI reported.
The AAP has demanded Jaitley's resignation and an investigation into the scandal, maintaining that the Central Bureau of Investigation's raid on Kejriwal's office on Tuesday was an attempt to cover corrupt activities in the DDCA during the finance minister's tenure as its president. Despite the CBI’s repeated assurances that its Delhi Secretariat raid had been aimed at Rajendra Kumar, Kejriwal's principal secretary, the party defended him and said he has had a “clean service record that spans over 27 years,” PTI reported.
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