Referring to the manner in which Kejriwal handled the allegations of
corruption against him, Mishra likened him to Nitin Gadkari, Arun Jaitley and Kapil Sibal. Mishra was implying that Kejriwal had become exactly what he had been ostensibly fighting for so long — a part of the corrupt political system, no different from established parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress.
For his part, Mishra compared his actions in 'exposing' Kejriwal's
corruption to what the anti-
corruption crusader has been doing himself since long before he joined politics.
AAP's high-powered Political Affairs Committee (PAC), chaired by Kejriwal, on Monday night suspended Mishra from the party's primary membership. Earlier, on Saturday, Mishra had been sacked from the Delhi Cabinet.
AAP has called Mishra's allegation – that he saw Kejriwal receive Rs 2 crore in cash from
AAP leader
Satyendar Jain at his residence and that Jain had settled a Rs 50 crore deal for the chief minister's brother-in-law, Surender Kumar Bansal - "baseless".
According to
CNN News18, Bansal passed away on Sunday night at Gurgaon hospital, hours after Mishra made the allegations of
corruption which involved him too.
Mishra was also not impressed by Kejriwal's response to his allegations. Responding to the
AAP supremo's tweet that "truth will triumph", Mishra said that he welcomed Kejriwal to have his name smeared all he wanted during the Delhi Legislative Assembly's special session on Tuesday, but the chief minister would have to face a probe in the matter nonetheless.
A defiant Mishra, in his verbal volleys on the Twitter, after his suspension, went on to elaborate his earlier tweets.
"First FIR will be on cash deal between Satyendra Jain and
Arvind Kejriwal Ji.
"Second FIR will be on How Satyendra Jain has benefitted close relatives of
Arvind Kejriwal in illegal land deals.
"Information related to third FIR has been received today through 'Lets Clean
AAP Campaign'," he claimed.
Both Jain and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia hit back at Mishra, saying that he had "lost his mental balance" and that he was levelling "baseless allegations". (
Read more)
"PAC is going on, even the embers in the funeral pyre of someone (Kejriwal's brother-in-law), have not gone cold, and allegation is being made in his name. Has the humanity died? Such baseless charge. Get some evidence," Sisodia tweeted in Hindi.
On Monday, Jain categorically rejected Mishra's charge, saying that "no deal took place" between him and Kejriwal and that this was just an "attempt to defame the AAP".
"He (Mishra) says Kejriwal's brother-in-law was to get the favour from a deal. It is shameful and disgusting. The person who has died today (brother-in-law), he is making allegation about a man who is dead," Jain said.
The AAP, earlier on Monday, also alleged that a big conspiracy was being hatched against it by the BJP through Mishra and said that Kejriwal would not resign over the "baseless allegations".
The party asserted that Mishra was making such allegations against Kejriwal "out of desperation" after being expelled from the Cabinet.
The remarks came after Mishra, the former water minister, on Monday submitted documents to the Anti-
Corruption Branch (ACB) to back his allegations that Kejriwal had delayed the probe into a Rs 400 crore tanker scam.
"A game of exploitation is being played against the
AAP. The BJP is hatching a conspiracy against the
AAP through Mishra,"
AAP leader Sanjay Singh told reporters during a press conference on Monday. Hitting out at Mishra over his allegations of
corruption against Kejriwal, Singh claimed that Mishra had himself written a letter to the ACB in September last year, saying that the anti-graft body was trying to implicate the chief minister in the water tanker scam under pressure even when his name was not mentioned in the evidence.