Aap Ki Adalat: BJP leader and former Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that it will be the lowest depth of shamelessness if Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tries to run the government from jail.
Responding to India TV’s Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma in his iconic show Aap Ki Adalat, the senior BJP leader was asked whether Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, presently in ED custody, can run a government from jail. Ravi Shankar Prasad replied, “In a democracy, everything does not run as per law. Loktantra (democracy) runs on Lok-Laaj (honour of people). A democracy is run through probity and propriety. If a Magsaysay Award winner, IIT graduate and Anna Hazare’s disciple claims so, it will be the lowest depth of shamelessness. What else can I say?”
When Rajat Sharma asked whether ED was misused to put a chief minister behind bars on the eve of elections, Prasad replied, “I will not say about his arrest, it is ED’s responsibility. But I want to ask some counter questions. Manish Sisodia has been in jail for a year, they sat on dharna at Rajghat. Sanjay Singh is in jail since six months. Satyender Jain is in jail for two years. In Kolkata, the minsiter from whom several crores were seized is in jail… They raise the bogey of ED and CBI but will never say what they did.”
When Rajat Sharma said, Kejriwal himself told the court that even a Chandni Chowk pickpocket cannot be arrested on the flimsy ground for which he was arrested, Prasad replied, “Kejriwal had projected himself as an honest leader, a disciple of Anna Hazare, but his former associates like Prashant Bhushan, Ashutosh, Kiran Bedi, Anupam Kher, Kumar Vishwas, Yogendra Yadav and Shazia Ilmi all left him one by one. All those who had joined him in his movement left him. I am not going to tell the whole story here.”
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Asked whether Kejriwal was arrested because he was the only leader who can challenge Narendra Modi, Prasad replied, “Is there any restriction on anybody issuing himself a certificate? He went to Varanasi (to challenge Modi) and lost, he went to Gujarat saying ‘a new lion has arrived’, and his party won one seat, in Delhi they could not win a single Lok Sabha seat. Yes, they won assembly elections, but politics of arrogance will not hold water. Yeh Public Hai Sab Jaanti Hai. Trust them… To say that I will run my government from jail, which has never happened before in our country. What is all this?”
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