AAP LAUNCHES FIGHTBACK

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal remains in jail, but his No. 2 Manish Sisodia is out, raising AAP's hopes as the assembly election nears. The beleaguered party is now chalking out its next course of action

- Avishek G. Dastidar

“Today, the truth has won,” Delhi minister Atishi said, breaking down while addressing a crowd in the city. It was August 9, and news had just trickled in that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) second-in-command Manish Sisodia had been granted bail by the Supreme Court 17 months after he was arrested in the excise policy case or ‘liquor policy scam’, depending on which side of the political divide you were talking to. Sisodia, the former deputy chief minister who was also in charge of the excise department, is at the centre of the case by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which alleges that the party created a new excise policy to benefit a select few and got kickbacks to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees for it.

For a party whose main leaders have been in jail in phases over the past two years (AAP supremo and chief strategist Arvind Kejriwal is still behind bars), this was a new lease of life barely six months before the Delhi election. Bail may not be acquittal, but there is no case beyond it. “The whole case was about the bail. Because it has no merit. That’s why they have created some 20,000 pages of a chargesheet, a huge list of witnesses. All this to keep dragging the trial and opposing the bail,” he told India Today after coming out of jail (see interview ‘Politics is a long game...). Sisodia believes the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) were invoked only to make bail difficult. “This kind of law is to stop funding for terrorists, it’s not to deny ordinary people bail.”