Hours after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said it had provisionally attached assets worth over ₹52.24 crore belonging to former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and others in the Delhi excise policy case, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the value of the confiscated assets belonging to Mr. Sisodia was only ₹80 lakh. He added that the said property was bought before 2018, when the excise policy was not even formulated.
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Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP of spreading lies and misusing the ED, he said the probe agency had been “running false news on TV channels since evening that Manish Sisodia’s property worth ₹52 crore” has been confiscated. “Total property worth ₹80 lakh has been confiscated, which is from before 2018 when the excise policy was not even formulated,” Mr. Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.
AAP, in a statement, said that as per ED documents, the value of the assets belonging to Mr. Sisodia and his wife total up to only ₹81 lakh. “Even in this, the flats are much older and have no relation to the ongoing case,” it read.
Reacting to the development, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said the seizure of the properties shows that the probe agencies have collected “ample evidence of Sisodia’s involvement in the liquor scam”.
“After today’s seizure, Manish Sisodia’s involvement in liquor scam stands established and so CM Kejriwal should expel him from the Aam Aadmi Party or else it would mean that liquor scam was blessed by Arvind Kejriwal himself,” he added.