Written by Vaishnavi Mishra
Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of politics of hooliganism and dictatorship, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers Friday staged a protest against the arrest of AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
On Monday, the ED arrested the Okhla MLA in connection with a money laundering case related to alleged illegal recruitments in the Delhi Waqf Board. A Delhi court sent him to four-day ED custody.
Around noon on Friday, a group of AAP workers started a demonstration outside the party’s old office on Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Marg and raised slogans against the BJP-led Centre.
The protest rally, which was supposed to head towards the BJP office a kilometre away, was halted by Delhi Police officers. Workers later called off the demonstration.
AAP MLAs Dilip Pandey, Kuldeep Kumar, Haji Yunus, along with the party’s national spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar, were present during the protest.
“The BJP is afraid of us in the electoral arena, and, hence, by misusing the investigating agencies, it conspiratorially arrests our leaders to defame us. The central government wants to scare us by misusing its ED-CBI and wants to stop our work,” alleged Kakkar.
Calling it the BJP’s conspiracy to wipe out the party, Yunus said, “The Modi government at the Centre has arrested our MLA (Amanatullah Khan) illegally. This is a conspiracy to wipe out the Aam Aadmi Party. In the case in which Amanatullah Khan has been arrested by ED, the CBI and ACB have given a clean chit.”
“The BJP should now desist from its actions… else the public will very soon oust them from power,” Yunus added.
An AAP worker from Shalimar Bagh, Jalaj Choudhary, said, “We have a government in the MCD, but all the authority is with the BJP. We struggle to work in Delhi, and our leaders are being arrested without any evidence.”
Vaishnavi Mishra is an intern at The Indian Express
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