Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on March 21, 2024. The ruling BJP has played a game of political profit by establishing Kejriwal through the ED as one of the masterminds of the Delhi liquor policy scam.
On November 17, 2021, the new liquor policy adopted for Delhi was implemented in the Union Territory. The liquor vends in Delhi were privatised as per this liquor policy.
The Delhi government has given a red carpet to the private sector to open a maximum of 27 liquor shops in each mandal, dividing Delhi in 32 zones. Accordingly, a total of 849 liquor shops were handed over to the private sector in Delhi by the Kejriwal government.
Under this policy, liquor vends under the excise department of Delhi are privatised. Earlier, 60 per cent of liquor shops in Delhi were in the public sector and 40 per cent were in the private sector. But as per the new rules, 100 per cent of delhi’s liquor shops go to the private sector.
The Delhi government claimed that the new liquor policy had resulted in a profit of Rs 3500 crore from the Delhi government. The then Delhi chief secretary had opposed the Kejriwal government’s liquor policy.
On July 8, 2022, he sent a report to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi regarding this new liquor policy. The chief secretary claimed that the Delhi government has lost over Rs 100 crore in revenue to the government with the new liquor policy.
He also claimed that there has been a huge amount of illegal money transactions for this. After receiving this report, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi on July 22, 2022 announced a CBI probe into the entire incident.
Accordingly, the CBI registered a case and raided the residences of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and three others on August 19. On August 22, 2022, the ED also registered a case of illegal money laundering and started its own investigation.
This is how investigations and investigations into Delhi’s new liquor policy began. A south company was allowed by the Delhi government to open liquor vends in nine zones. P Sarath Chand Reddy was associated with that company. K Kavitha was associated with this institute in Hyderabad.
This Sarath Reddy also owns another company. The name of this company is Arvind Pharma Limited. The pharmaceutical company was founded by Sarath Reddy’s father P V Ramaprasad Reddy.
The current director of that company is P Sarath Chand Reddy. In the investigation, the ED has claimed that through such a new liquor policy, companies get a profit margin of 12 per cent at wholesale rates and 185 per cent by selling liquor in the retail market. Of this, 12 per cent of the profit margin of the wholesale goes to the AAP at 6 per cent.
Interestingly, the Delhi government had scrapped the new liquor policy while the probe into the liquor scam was underway. On July 30, 2022, Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was in charge of the excise department, scrapped the new liquor policy applied on November 17, 2021, and reintroduced the old liquor policy.
This is the flow and context of the Delhi liquor scam. Kejriwal, who came to power in protest against corruption, is a story of being accused of corruption and going to jail.