Mumbai: For the second consecutive day, the Aam Aadmi Party protested against the arrest of Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia by the Central Bureau of Investigation in an alleged corruption case, here on Monday.
On Monday, hundreds of AAP workers staged noisy demonstrations near Churchgate station, after a similar protest outside Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) on Sunday.
Incidentally, Sisodia’s arrest on Sunday came two days after the AAP’s Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had come for a high-profile meeting with the President of Shiv Sena (UBT) and Maharashtra ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray in Mumbai (February 24), to discuss a common platform to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Addressing the gathering near Churchgate on Monday, AAP Mumbai President Preeti Sharma-Menon said that this is a state of ‘undeclared emergency’ in the country and the party would not be cowed down by Sisodia’s arrest and said he was being targeted by the CBI without a base.
“We were born on the streets of India, protesting against corruption and injustice… If one Manish Sisodia is arrested, crores more like him will emerge,” thundered Sharma-Menon.
She alleged that on one hand there is Gautam Adani who scammed Indians of lakhs of crores of rupees and there is no action against him by the CBI, and there were many scandals by the Congress during the UPA regime, but the CBI did not act against any of its leaders.
“On the other hand, Sisodia, who is the architect of Delhi government’s education revolution is being unnecessarily hounded in a fake case… This is an attack on the excellent world-class education being imparted to millions of students by the Delhi administration,” she said.
Other leaders said that the BJP fears only APP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scared of only Arvind Kejriwal, and they are being targeted as AAP is the country’s fastest growing political party with the capacity to take on the BJP.
The Mumbai Police had deployed tight security around Churchgate and detained a large number of the protestors.