Members of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its youth wing were hit with water cannons by the police outside Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's residence on Wednesday morning for staging a protest demanding his resignation in connection with the alleged Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) scam.
The protesters were later detained and taken to the Parliament House Police Station.
The protest was lead by AAP MLA Jagdeep Singh, and Somnath Bharti was also present.
"This is a peaceful protest. Arun Jaitley should resign. They are conducting CBI raids on us for small things, " Singh was quoted as saying by NDTV.
AAP members had climbed atop the barricades placed outside Arun Jaitley's residence on Krishna Menon Marg, prompting the police to unleash water cannons to contain the crowd. The road, being part of Lutyen's Delhi and close to the Ministry of Defence, has a prohibitory order forbidding more than five people from assembling there for security reasons.
The AAP, with its protest on Wednesday, was retaliating to the BJP's protest staged a day earlier. The AAP had announced it would be setting up a commission to investigate the irregularities in the DDCA under Jaitley's term. According to the BJP, the AAP doesn't have the jurisdiction to do so.
Cricketers like Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma, and other have backed Jaitley, voicing their support for him, as reported by IBTimes India, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Jaitley would be cleared just like LK Advani was in the hawala case.
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad was quoted as saying by Business Line: "Today I heard that the prime minister said Jaitley would come out of this like LK Advani in the Jain Hawala case. I will remind Jaitley that Advani had then resigned and had not come back till he got a clean chit from the Supreme Court. So, the prime minister seems to be telling Jaitley he should not continue as finance minister till he is cleared."
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday, in a special Assembly session constituted to discuss the DDCA, unleashed a flurry of personal attacks on Modi. He was quoted as saying by The Indian Express: "He [Modi] has nothing to do with the country. He has a big plane with all facilities and stays in five-star hotels... Everything runs smoothly when he is out of the country. The day he returns, the CBI is unleashed on the Opposition."
