‘CM will hold review meeting with mins from next week’
New Delhi, April 15: AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sandeep Pathak on Monday said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, arrested in the Delhi excise policy scam case, will call two ministers to jail each week and review the progress of the work in their departments.
Pathak and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann met Kejriwal in Tihar on Monday.
Arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on March 21, Kejriwal is currently in judicial custody and is lodged in Tihar jail. A person in judicial custody cannot sign documents which are political in nature.
Pathak, who is the Aam Aadmi Party’s National General Secretary (Organization), at a press conference conveyed the chief minister’s plan of action for reviewing the functioning of various departments in the coming days.
“From next week, the chief minister will call two ministers to jail every week and there he will review the work of their departments and give them guidelines and directions,” he said.
“We will undertake whatever legal process are needed (to make this happen). From next week, when the ministers meet, the government will start functioning from jail in a proper format,” Pathak said.
Inmates can’t sign political documents: DG
With the AAP maintaining that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is running his government from Tihar jail, Director General (prisons) Sanjay Baniwal on Monday said an inmate can sign legal papers and personal complaints during his judicial custody but underlined that documents signed should not be political in nature.
In an interaction with PTI editors at its headquarters here, Baniwal also said no distinction is made in the treatment meted out to the inmates and it is ensured they get the same basic right.
Earlier in the day, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann met Kejriwal in jail and alleged that he was not getting the amenities even a hardcore criminal is allowed in Tihar.
Responding to this, Baniwal said, “There is no distinction between a hardcore or a normal criminal. In the jail manual, there is no distinction between the inmates. Every inmate has basic rights and it is my duty to ensure that. These are being ensured to everyone.”
Nobody is accorded special treatment and there is no such provision, he said. “I have 20,000 inmates and there are thousands of people coming to meet them every day. There is never a single complaint. So, I don’t see any reason to be different with A and B,” the DG (prisons) said.
ED arrests man who ‘managed’ AAP funds for Goa polls
The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Chanpreet Singh, who allegedly “managed” cash funds for AAP’s campaign in 2022 Goa Assembly polls, in connection with the Delhi excise policy-linked money laundering case, official sources said Monday.
Singh was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on April 12 and was produced before a special court here the next day, the sources said. He has been sent to the ED custody till April 18 by the court, they said. This is the 17th arrest in the case by the ED. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his party colleague and former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia, BRS leader K Kavitha and a number of liquor businessmen and others have been arrested earlier by the federal agency. (PTI)