00:00The Enforcement Directorate's summons to AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal
00:09is the big political story at the moment.
00:12Mr Kejriwal has decided to skip the summons.
00:14He has written to the Enforcement Directorate saying he's busy campaigning for the upcoming
00:18state polls and has dashed off to Madhya Pradesh instead.
00:21But he's also called the ED summons as vague, as in the nature of a phishing and roving
00:27inquiry which doesn't specify in what capacity he's being summoned, whether it's as a witness
00:32or as a suspect and so on.
00:34The story, of course, is not going to end there.
00:36The ED, remember, does have significant powers and is very likely going to issue him a fresh
00:41summons and he will eventually be forced to appear before them.
00:45The question, though, is, will Mr Kejriwal be arrested by the ED?
00:50That is a very likely possibility.
00:52And this all has huge repercussions for the Aam Aadmi Party.
00:56If you look at the party which came to power a decade ago and came into the headlines a
01:00decade ago on a massive anti-corruption plank, the string of arrests by investigating agencies,
01:07the raids that their leaders and others have faced over the last couple of years or so,
01:12they have to an extent dented the Aam Aadmi Party's image.
01:15Though at the same time, voters also realize that most of the ED's cases in the last 10
01:20years, the political cases at least, have been against opposition politicians alone.
01:25So voters aren't stupid, they realize what's happening here.
01:28But the fact that higher courts have also denied bail to AAP leaders, like the Supreme
01:33Court denying bail to Manish Shishodiya in the liquor policy case only days earlier,
01:38that too could have an impact amongst voters, which always saw the AAP on a very clean anti-corruption
01:45plank.
01:46But for the AAP, there are other repercussions because Mr Kejriwal is their convener, he's
01:49their leader, and if he is indeed arrested, the party has now gone into a huddle to figure
01:54out who exactly would lead them into the state polls and more importantly, the general
01:59elections, if Mr Kejriwal is out of action for some time.
02:03It's explosive times and the final act has not yet been played.
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