‘...AAP Leaders Should Be in Jail...’: Sandeep Dikshit Makes Fresh Allegations; Targets Kejriwal, Satyendar Jain

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on Wednesday said financial irregularities in project awards related to Delhi’s sewage treatment infrastructure had been evident for years, while casting doubt on the credibility of repeated unverified tip-offs after the arrest of AAP leader and former Delhi Water Minister Satyendar Kumar Jain.

Speaking to ANI, Dikshit asserted that prolonged, unsubstantiated allegations erode public trust. 

“The sewage treatment plant has been known for 7-8 years in Delhi that irregularities are occurring. New contracts are being awarded at double, triple, or quadruple the rates, and the internal specifications have been reduced. So, to say there was no suspicion is wrong; there was suspicion from the start. And this is his old, familiar tactic of saying ‘insiders told me,’” he said.

He drew parallels with earlier controversies, adding: “When a person can tell such blatant lies and then repeats the same story over and over, I don’t think even Arvind Kejriwal’s blind followers will believe him. It’s like the ‘crying wolf’ story; if you keep crying wolf, eventually even your own people stop believing you. So, no one takes his words seriously anymore. You can make any accusation you want. My point is, if you haven’t done anything wrong, you will be acquitted in court, so what’s the problem?”

Summarising his view on governance and the Yamuna, Dikshit said, “In our country, there is no punishment for failing to do work. If there were, I believe the entire Aam Aadmi Party should be in jail for failing to clean the Yamuna. The programs created in 2012-13 by the Congress government to install interceptors on the large drains flowing into the Yamuna, which account for about 80% of the pollution, were designed to intercept dirty water at various points, clean it, remove the sludge, and release clean water back into the river.”

On Wednesday, the Anti-Corruption Bureau produced Jain and other accused persons at the Rouse Avenue Court. They were arrested in an ACB FIR registered on 11 May 2024 under Sections 7, 7A, 9 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018), read with Sections 42, 409, 418 and 120-B of the IPC. The ACB has arrested six persons in the case involving alleged corruption, cheating, criminal breach of trust and conspiracy.

AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal questioned Union Home Minister Amit Shah over the arrest, alleging external pressure on the agency. In a post on X, Kejriwal said, “Amit Shah ji should explain why he got Satyendra Jain arrested by pressuring the investigation agency.”In another post, he claimed: “An Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) official revealed that there was no plan for the ACB to arrest Satyendra Jain until morning. Then in the afternoon, a direct call came from Amit Shah ji saying, ‘Arrest him.’ That’s when the arrest was made.” Kejriwal further alleged that arrests were no longer being made on the basis of whether a person had committed a crime: “Clearly, now arrests don’t happen based on whether someone has committed a crime or not, but rather on whom those two want to arrest.”

Meanwhile, BJP MP and former AAP leader Swati Maliwal levelled serious allegations against Kejriwal, claiming he had run a “shop of corruption” in Delhi for a decade and had now shifted focus to Punjab. Speaking to reporters, she said, “In the last 10 years in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal was running a shop of corruption. Whether it was the school classroom construction scam, the liquor scam, or countless other scams that these people orchestrated. And if we observe closely, Arvind Kejriwal operated very shrewdly.”

She added, “During the 10 years he remained the Chief Minister of Delhi, he did not hold charge of a single ministry. His modus operandi is very clear: he orchestrated corruption through his ministers, and the moment a minister was exposed, he would shift the entire blame onto that minister.”