Hours after CBI summoned chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to appear before it on Sunday, BJP and Congress claimed that Kejriwal was the mastermind of the alleged liquor scam and would be the next to go to jail. Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said, "We believe that the investigation of this liquor scam has now reached its mastermind and the day is not far when all the three friends who miss each other - Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain - will sit together in the same barrack." Delhi Congress president Anil Kumar Chaudhary said the CBI summons to Kejriwal vindicated the party's stand from the very beginning that he was the mastermind behind the alleged scam. "It has now become crystal clear that Kejriwal was the mastermind behind the liquor deal, and he was in the full know of everything that transpired in the case," Chaudhary said, adding that "the day will not be too far when Kejriwal would be put behind the bar for his complicity in the liquor scam". BJP MP Parvesh Verma asked, "Could the liquor policy have been passed without Kejriwal's order? So how can Kejriwal survive in the liquor scam when allegations against Sisodia will be proved?" He added, "If nothing is done, why is Kejriwal paying crores of fees from tax payers' money to a Congress leader as the lawyer and not using state government lawyers?" In February, CBI arrested former minister Manish Sisodia in connection with the alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. Jain was arrested in May last year by Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case. Both of them resigned from the Delhi cabinet in February and are in jail.
