Chandigarh: With a Haryana court summoning the former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to appear before it on February 17, the row between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo and the Haryana government over his "poison in Yamuna’’ statement, entered a legal battleground on Wednesday.
The court notice has directed Kejriwal to appear before it on February 17 failing which action will be taken against him as per the rule of law.
For record, Kejriwal had recently alleged that the Haryana government was attempting to ``poison’’ the Yamuna to disrupt Delhi’s water supply.
The Haryana government had filed a complaint under the Disaster Management Act in the court of chief judicial magistrate (CJM), Sonepat, by State Disaster Management Authority, Haryana, through Ashish Kaushik, Executive Engineer, Rai Water Services Division, Sonepat, Haryana, under Sections 2 (D) and 54 of the said Act against Kejriwal for ``willfully and deliberately making false alarms/warnings regarding poisoning of water by the Government of Haryana in Yamuna River leading to panic in the area.’’
Earlier in the day, while interacting with newspersons here, the revenue and disaster management minister, Vipul Goel, who termed Kejriwal’s statement absurd and misleading said that the Election Commission should take strict cognisance of such baseless statements. Kejriwal has done cheap politics by making such allegations against Haryana following which the state government has taken legal action.
Stating that the water supplied to Delhi is the same water consumed by the President, Prime Minister, and Union Ministers, Goel accused Kejriwal of spreading fear not only among Delhi’s people but also among Haryana’s citizens with his false claims.
He slammed the Delhi government for completely failing to clean the Yamuna river and accused Kejriwal of making baseless allegations against Haryana just to save his political image before the elections. He held that the people of Haryana consider the Yamuna sacred, and spreading false propaganda is both an insult to Haryana and an attempt to mislead the people of Delhi.
The minister said that Arvind Kejriwal claimed that he stopped so-called “poisonous water” from entering Delhi, but there is no evidence to support this claim. He said that Kejriwal has an old habit of covering up his failures by making false statements.
The minister further accused the Delhi government of failing to keep its promise of cleaning the Yamuna. He alleged that out of 37 sewage treatment plants in Delhi, only 17 are operational, which reflected the inefficiency and negligence of the Delhi government. He said that this mismanagement is not only affecting the people of Delhi but also those living in Haryana’s Faridabad, Palwal, and Mewat districts.
