New Delhi, Oct 23 — Delhi BJP President Harsh Malhotra on Friday criticised Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s failed bid to evade customs duty while returning to the country after a foreign visit and asked Arvind Kejriwal to share details of the goods for which the former was penalised by the customs.
“People of the country and Punjab want Arvind Kejriwal to explain why Bhagwant Mann violated customs rules and what taxable goods he was allegedly trying to evade tax on,” said Malhotra.
The Delhi BJP President said Mann was often in the news for allegedly setting several records by entering Parliament and the Assembly after consuming alcohol, but now he has become the first Chief Minister in the country to be fined Rs 50,000 under the Customs Act, 1962.
The Delhi BJP President drew the attention of Aam Aadmi Party Convenor Arvind Kejriwal to reports according to which Mann, while returning from a foreign trip, allegedly attempted to pass through the green channel despite carrying luxury taxable goods, in violation of customs rules.
However, alert customs officials stopped him, inspected his baggage, and subsequently imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on several items, Malhotra said, quoting reports.
The Delhi BJP President said that it is beyond comprehension what message Mann wanted to convey to ordinary citizens by allegedly making an unruly attempt to pass through the green channel despite carrying taxable goods.
In another development, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor hit out at the AAP for attempts to allege a scam in the “poor quality of paper” in textbooks distributed in government schools.
Kapoor said Delhi witnessed a textbook crisis for Classes 6 to 12 throughout the 11 years of AAP government’s rule. Moreover, as soon as the Kejriwal government came to power in the Municipal Corporation in 2022, it created a shortage of textbooks there as well.
The Delhi BJP spokesperson said that records bear witness to the fact that, during Kejriwal’s 11-year rule, cases concerning the failure to provide textbooks reached the courts almost every year, and the Education Department was reprimanded on numerous occasions.
Kapoor said it was laughable that Delhi AAP convenor Saurabh Bharadwaj, a former minister in a government under whose tenure there was a textbook crisis in almost every academic session, was now raising questions about the poor quality of textbook paper.
It appears that Bharadwaj considers himself an expert capable of judging the quality of paper as well, said Kapoor.