Sisodia, Jain should be immediately removed from Delhi cabinet: Leader of Opposition Bidhuri

NEW DELHI, (PTI): Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri on Monday demanded that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal immediately remove his two arrested ministers — Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain — from the cabinet.

The Delhi cabinet should be ”reshuffled immediately”, he said.

Sisodia was arrested by the CBI Sunday evening in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped liquor policy for 2021-22, while Jain was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on money laundering charges in May last year.

In a statement issued by his office, Bidhuri said that constitutionally and morally, it is also necessary that there should be an immediate change in the Delhi cabinet.

Chief Minister Kejriwal should ”immediately drop his two ministers…from the cabinet”, it said.

Bidhuri said Jain has been in jail since May last year. All his portfolios were handed over to Deputy Chief Minister Sisodia, and now Sisodia is also under CBI custody.

”Arvind Kejriwal is the only chief minister in the whole country who has not kept any portfolio with him. In this way, three out of seven ministers do not have any portfolio now. It is not right to leave the whole of Delhi to the trust of the remaining four ministers,” Bidhuri said.

He said it would ”not be fair” to the people of Delhi that the party which has 62 MLAs out of 70 in the Assembly is not even able to ”give a full government to Delhi”.

He said that since May last year, ”we have been demanding that Jain be removed from the cabinet, and a new minister be appointed in his place, but we do not know what kind of attachment Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has with him that he is being given all the facilities including the salary of the minister”.

”Now the situation has worsened after the arrest of Manish Sisodia. It would also not be legally correct that the ministers who are facing such serious allegations should be retained as ministers,” he said.

Bidhuri said Madan Lal Khurana, the then chief minister of the BJP-led government in 1996, had ”resigned on moral grounds” after allegations were levelled against him, while the party had not even asked him to resign at that time.

Kejriwal calls himself honest, but ”the style so far shows that he is doing politics of deceit and dishonesty at every step,” he alleged.

At least, he can pretend to be honest by removing these ministers, Bidhuri said. (PTI)