Alleging poaching attempts by BJP, Arvind Kejriwal seeks trust vote in Delhi Assembly on day of court summons

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal moved a motion of confidence in the Assembly on Friday, a day ahead of his appearance before a city court following an Enforcement Directorate complaint against him for skipping summonses in the excise policy case.

The motion will be discussed in the Assembly on Saturday in presence of ruling Aam Aadmi Party MLAs and Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri since seven of the eight BJP legislators were suspended for the remainder of the session for allegedly interfering during the Lt Governor's address on Thursday.

This is the second time that the Kejriwal government has sought a trust vote in the 70-member Assembly. In the current Assembly, the AAP has 62 MLAs while the BJP has eight.

Tabling the confidence motion on Friday, the chief minister said, "Two MLAs had come to me saying they were contacted by BJP members offering them Rs 25 crore each. They were told that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will be arrested and the government will be toppled."

"They were also told that the BJP is in touch with 21 MLAs. They have made multiple attempts to approach our MLAs under 'Operation Lotus'. Even this time, our MLAs refused to budge."

Kejriwal said the AAP checked with all its MLAs after these claims and it was found that seven of its legislators were approached, but none of them accepted the offer.

He claimed that the Delhi excise policy case was false. Kejriwal's trusted aides -- Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh -- are in jail in connection with the excise policy case.

"This so-called liquor scam is not a scam. The only aim is to topple the Delhi government by one means or another. AAP leaders were arrested under the guise of the scam. But even this effort was not successful. Not a single MLA of ours has defected and all our MLAs are still with us," the chief minister asserted in the House.

He said that the BJP knows that it can never win elections in Delhi and that's why they are using different tactics to topple the AAP government. "To show that none of our MLAs have defected, I present this resolution, 'The House expresses its trust in the cabinet'," he said.

Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri claimed that Kejriwal, despite having the support of 62 MLAs, was bringing the trust vote motion that showed his confidence was shaken.

"Not only this. Even before the trust vote is presented, they are so afraid of just eight BJP MLAs that they got seven of them suspended," he alleged.

Bidhuri said it was surprising that Kejriwal was tabling a confidence motion alleging BJP of trying to poach AAP MLAs, but was not presenting evidence of it to the police that has already given him a notice in this regard.

Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said the discussion on Kejriwal's confidence motion will be held on Saturday.

A Delhi court has asked Kejriwal to appear before it on February 17 on a complaint filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for skipping summonses in an excise policy-linked case and noted that prima facie the AAP chief was "legally bound" to comply.

The ED had moved the court after Kejriwal skipped five summonses by the probe agency for questioning in a Delhi liquor policy-linked money laundering case. Earlier this week, the ED issued its sixth summons to Kejriwal for his questioning. He has been asked to depose before the federal agency on February 19.