Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) condemned the move by tainted Jailed convict Delhi CM, branding it a “PR stunt” aimed at improving his tarnished image to seek public sympathy and garner votes.

NEW DELHI, 14 SEPTEMBER, 2024 : AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal (AK) addressed a public meeting on Sunday, 2 days after being released on bail subject to conditions said, he would resign after two days, vowing not to sit in the CM’s chair till people give him a “Certificate of honesty”. The tainted Delhi CM made this announcement while addressing the first big gathering following his exit from Tihar jail after six months.

Arvind Kejriwal said that a meeting of AAP’s 60 MLAs in Delhi will be held on Sunday to choose within the next two days the next Chief Minister for the national capital. Following this, he would resign as Chief Minister.
“Delhi elections are due in February but I demand that elections in the national capital be held in November with Maharashtra,” he said.

“I will only sit in the CM’s chair after people give me a certificate of honesty. Want to give ‘agnipariksha’ after coming out of jail,” he added.

AAP MP Raghav Chadha has supported to Arvind Kejriwal’s agnipariksha “Now it’s in the hands of the people of Delhi to decide if he is honest or not. Arvind Kejriwal had asked for votes in the name of work in 2020 and said that if I have worked then vote for me, if I have not worked then do not vote for me,” he said.

Besides Mr Kejriwal, his former deputy Manish Sisodia, also on bail in a liquor policy case, is likely to play a key role in this campaign.

In reaction BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said, “This is a PR stunt by jail convicted AK. He has understood that his image among the people of Delhi is not of an honest leader but of a corrupt leader, today AAP is known across the country as a corrupt party. Under his PR stunt, he wants to restore his image. He wants to apply the Sonia Gandhi model, where she made Manmohan Singh a dummy Prime Minister and ran the government from behind the scenes. They have understood today that the AAP is losing the Delhi elections and the people of Delhi cannot vote in their name, so they want to make someone else a scapegoat,”

BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi in conversation with GPN alleged that Kejriwal’s resignation is a direct “admission of the allegations against him.”

Trivedi stated, “Arvind Kejriwal has accepted all the allegations put on him. This resignation is not just a political move but a result of internal turmoil within his party. He is the first Chief Minister to break the laws made by his own party.”

Speaking to GPN, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said, “There is no question of him becoming the CM again. We have been saying for a long time that he should resign as the CM… This is a mere gimmick. This happened for the first time when an elected leader came out of jail on bail, and was asked by the SC to not go to the CMO or sign any papers. Such conditions were never imposed on any other CM.Maybe even the SC fears that this person might try to tamper with the evidence.The SC is treating him like a criminal… There is no correlation between morality and Arvind Kejriwal,” he said.