‘Modi has made CBI, RBI a joke’

NEW DELHI: CM Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday that the BJP-led Centre was getting nervous about AAP’s “imminent electoral success” in Punjab and Goa. His reaction came soon after a CBI team reached the directorate of information and publicity in Civil Lines in the evening to search for documents pertaining to the Delhi government’s outreach programme, ‘Talk To AK’.
“Now A CBI Case Against Sisodia: Is AAP Giving the BJP Sleepless Nights Still? Modi ji has turned both CBI and RBI into laughing stocks,” Kejriwal tweeted.
Hours later, deputy CM Manish Sisodia, against whom the case has been initiated as he is the minister of both revenue and DIP, said: “CBI could find nothing against me even after spending five hours in the DIP office. Mdiji, now you will have to arrest me from my house with proof.”
Earlier, he tweeted, “Your (Modi) threats in the form of CBI won’t be able to save your favourite Majithia who is embroiled with the drugs mafia. His countdown has started.”
Held last year, ‘Talk To AK’ was compared to PM Narendra Modi’s “Mann Ki Baat”, through which he discussed various issues via a live stream. Delhi government officials said the details revealed by CBI, both in this case and in that of appointment of health minister Satyendar Jain’s daughter Saumya as volunteer in the health department, were false. They added that they were not aware of what Sisodia was being charged with.
“The government did not appoint any consultant for ‘Talk To AK’. It had hired a public relation firm, Perfect Relations, through a tendering process to handle government work. Later it was decided to start ‘Talk To AK’. Since the government had no expertise in the matter, it asked Perfect Relations to arrange for the online publicity,” said a senior government official. “As a policy, the government has no system for either payment in advance or through credit cards while some of the fora on which ‘Talk To AK’ was publicised only take payment through credit card.”
The official added that the PR firm had made its own arrangements and presented the government with a bill of Rs 98 lakh, which had not been paid. “So CBI’s claim of Rs 1.5 crore is baseless as it is off the mark. Secondly, we did not pay any service charge to the PR firm,” he said.
Jain, who clarified that his daughter was not paid while she worked with the government, said: “She was a volunteer who did not receive any pay or perks. She did travel for one event but I paid for the entire trip.”