JOIN USIn typical AAP style, Congress leader and former education minister Kiran Walia on Thursday took to the streets demanding the resignation of Law Minister Somnath Bharti over his “unethical” practice of “tampering with evidence” in a court case.
Leading a protest march of supporters up to the house of Bharti in Malviya Nagar, Walia said: “He has no moral right to remain in office.”
“A minister who has been pulled up by a CBI Special Judge should resign immediately,” said an aggressive Walia.
Shouting the slogan “Somnath Bharti Istifa do”, the Congress supporters held placards displaying enlarged cuttings of news reports on Bharti, who slipped away from his home before Walia and other area residents reached the spot.
Walia, who is the former Malviya Nagar legislator, said the people of Delhi were not willing to “take any excuse from the law minister” justifying his misconduct in court trial. CBI Special Judge Poonam A Bamba in her order on August 26 pulled up Bharti, then an advocate, for unethical conduct by communicating with a witness outside court while defending his client Pawan Kumar in a corruption case.
Walia questioned the Kejriwal government’s commitment to give security to women in the city and pointed out to a gaffe by Bharti in naming in public the Danish woman who was gang raped near New Delhi railway station on Tuesday.
“The insensitive minister revealed the foreigner’s identity before TV journalists who warned him not to do so,” said Walia and asked: “Is such a person capable of handling such a vital portfolio of law in the Delhi government?”
“On the one hand, there is no mention of the commando force for women promised by the AAP in its manifesto and, on the other, the law minister is revealing rape victim’s name,” said the former Delhi minister.
She also attacked Bharti for his alleged attempt to take law into his own hand and raid a house in the wee hours on Thursday in Khirki Extension colony, under the Greater Kailash constituency, to “expose” suspected drug abuse and prostitution.
As cops from Malviya Nagar police station kept an eye on the protesters, scared supporters and employees of Bharti rushed to the terrace of the minister’s second floor house and shouted slogans to interrupt the Congress agitation.