Senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said that BJP leader Kapil Mishra has tendered an unconditional apology to him, before a Delhi court, for levelling graft allegations against the latter shortly after he was expelled by the Aam Aadmi Party in 2017.
He said that Mishra has accepted that his comments were politically motivated. Jain said that the unconditional apology exposes the reality that Mishra had no ground to such allegations and did that with a political purpose. The accusations made were extremely offensive which left me completely distressed, Jain added.
Slamming the BJP, AAP chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj said that this whole incident proves that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was behind the comments of Kapil Mishra. He also said that if Mishra does not apologize through his social media handles as he has assured the court then he will be sent to jail.
Jain said, “In 2017, when Kapil Mishra was ousted from Arvind Kejriwal government, he put baseless allegations on me for bribing Hon’ble CM with an amount of Rs 2 crore. The accusations made were extremely offensive which left me completely distressed. However, upon interrogation. Mishra failed to provide facts supporting his claim since he was never present at CM’s house. In light of this, I had filed a criminal case against him in court. Yesterday, he submitted a written apology stating that the accusations he made were politically motivated, and wrong. He has tendered an unconditional public apology and assured non-repetition of the same.”
Addressing the media present, Saurabh Bhardwaj added, “Kapil Mishra, in front of Mahatama Gandhi memorial, kept on stating 3 things:
1. I won’t ever leave AAP
2. I will never join BJP
3. They can never oust me from AAP since I’m the true Aam Aadmi.
“While we always maintained that Kapil Mishra was working for BJP and he will join their party. The allegations he put were completely baseless. As stated by Kapil Mishra, in May 2017, he witnessed Hon’ble minister bribing the Chief Minister with an amount of Rs 2 crores.”
He said, “There is 24×7 CCTV surveillance at the CMs residence. Not to mention patrolling by Delhi Police. Anyone who visits the CM house is properly checked and whatever is being carried is examined in the CCTV footage. When we questioned him about the timings of his visit, he couldn’t divulge any details for he never visited the CM’s house on May 5, 2017. This was enough for us to prove that he was lying. In 2018, I held a press conference wherein we announced that CBI, too was unable to find proof.
“When we filed a disqualification petition against his MLA status in Vidhan Sabha, he kept apologising in private, and was a different man in public. His apology though, is quite interesting. He claims his accusations were politically motivated and that he was forced to make them. He has publicly stated that he shall not repeat the same and shall publish his apology on his social media handles. If he doesn’t do so, he should be ready to go to jail, yet again,” said Bhardwaj.
He said, “Lastly I would say, #kejribribebomb was run across all channels when this false claim was made and Kapil Mishra was interviewed for hours together. And the story was run in continuation. I believe both Shri Jain, and Hon’ble CM faced a lot of flak during this. I request media houses and personnel to run this apology news in the same manner. Carry this news for 15 days straight. Take interviews of Kapil Mishra. We request you to give it the same amount of importance as given last time.”