Delhi CM to face trust vote in Assembly after court appearance

New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly will vote on a motion of confidence introduced by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today in a show of strength following allegations by his party that the BJP was attempting to "poach" AAP MLAs.

Ahead of the trust vote, Arvind Kejriwal appeared in a Delhi court via video conferencing this morning after abstaining from five previous summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the liquor policy case. The court will resume hearing the case on March 16.

The court called Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Chief, to come before it today, stating that he was "legally bound" to do so, NDTV reported.

In its complaint, the ED said that the Delhi chief minister refused to answer the summons on purpose and kept making "lame excuses". If a high-ranking public official like him broke the law, it would "set a wrong example for the common man, i.e. the Aam Aadmi," the agency stated.

Kejriwal's trust vote comes ahead of the ED's sixth summons, scheduled for February 19.

The AAP chief has ignored five summonses thus far, and he and his party have consistently claimed that the summonses were illegal and that the agency's only objective is to arrest him.

Moving the vote of confidence resolution in the Assembly yesterday, Kejriwal stated that two AAP MLAs informed him that they had been approached by BJP members who indicated that the Delhi Chief Minister would be detained shortly.

"The MLAs were told that 21 AAP legislators have agreed to leave the party and more are in touch with the BJP. They offered the MLAs ₹ 25 crore to join the BJP. The MLAs told me they did not accept. When we spoke to other MLAs, we found that they had not contacted 21, but seven. They were trying to carry out another Operation Lotus," Mr Kejriwal said.

"I want to show that none of our MLAs defected, and all remain steadfastly aligned with us," he said.

This is the second time Arvind Kejriwal's government has requested a trust vote. The Aam Aadmi Party has 62 MLAs in the 70-member Assembly, while the BJP has 8.

Ever since the Enforcement Directorate issued the initial summons, there has been widespread speculation that the Delhi chief minister would be arrested following his questioning.

With three of its leaders behind jail (Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, and Satyendra Jain), the AAP has long anticipated the possibility and has planned potential courses of action. They even want Mr Kejriwal to continue as Chief Minister and carry out his duties from jail.

The CBI claims that liquor corporations were involved in developing excise policy, which would have netted them a 12% profit. A liquor lobby known as the "South Group" received payments, some of which were directed to public servants. ED alleged that the kickbacks had been laundered.

The BJP has claimed that AAP utilised the funds of the alleged scam to support its large-scale campaign in Gujarat, where it received 12.91 per cent of the vote and established itself as a national party.