Aam Aadmi Party MLA Jarnail Singh who hurled a shoe at the former Home Minister P Chidambaram in 2009 said it was not okay to throw ink at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The AAP MLA was responding to the young ink attacker, Bhavna Arora's fresh allegations on Wednesday that the sting CD she submitted on Kejriwal’s insistence shows CNG cylinders from junked vehicles on sale at west Delhi's Mayapuri market.
At the January 17 public event on the completion of the ambitious odd-even car curbs fortnight, Arora told reporters she had “poof in the form of a CD”.
Arvind Kejriwal government had then dismissed her allegations of a ‘scam’, saying the evidence handed over by her showed lapses on the part of Central government-approved CNG cylinder-testing stations.
Speaking to DH on Wednesday, the AAP MLA brushed aside Arora's allegations as a “political gimmick” and said the Delhi government has brought in Lokpal Bill to protect whistleblowers.
He said allegations of “mala fide” cannot be levelled against Kejriwal since he “cared to collect the documents” on the alleged CNG scam.
Arora’s Aam Aadmi Sena, a splinter group of the Aam Aadmi Party, earlier in the day held a press conference to talk about the sting and suggest that Delhi CM could have let her go unpunishment.
As the Punjab in-charge, she will lead Sena’s attack against the parent party in the coming Assembly polls.
On being asked about her allegations, Jarnail Singh insisted that the 1984 anti-Sikh riots can’t be compared with the recent ink-throwing incident.
The AAP’s Rajouri Garden MLA said at that time Chidamabaram had said that he was very happy with Congress leader Jagdish Tytler being given a clean chit in connection with the 1984 riots.
Singh recalled this while defending his act of throwing a shoe at the then Union minister.
He added that two Congress leaders accused of Sikh riots, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, were denied Lok Sabha tickets after he hurled a shoe at the then Home Minister, protesting against his remark on the “clean chit” to Congress leaders.
He said he decided to join Kejriwal’s party after it appointed a special investigation team into the riots during its 49-day stint in the government. Since then, the journalist-turned-politician has unsuccessfully contested on AAP’s Lok Sabha ticket and scored a win in his debut Assembly elections in February 2015.
Criticising the ink-throwing incident, the AAP MLA recalled witnessing the 1984 “pogrom” while growing up as a boy in Delhi.
‘No justice’
“There is something wrong when there is no justice even after setting up of 10 commissions of inquiry,” he said.
Singh questioned the ink attacker’s intentions and said, “Why did she not approach the anti-corruption branch with her CD?” He also slammed BJP’s for its handling of the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh.
But Arora told DH that Kejriwal government slapped cases against her, unlike P Chidambaram, who had then asked Delhi Police not to press charges against Singh.
