Chandigarh:
The bail for former Delhi minister Satyendar Jain of the AAP in the Delhi Jal Board corruption case has come as a shot in the arm for the party, which now has a fresh courtroom peg for its charge that the BJP has turned the Centre into an “ED party”, a reference to alleged misuse of central probe agencies such as the ED, or Enforcement Directorate. And the impact is being felt in Punjab too.
The order, coming after remarks on delay and weak grounds for custody, has given AAP’s narrative some momentum when the ED steps up raids and drops letter bombs in election-bound Punjab. Arvind Kejriwal’s party presents Jain’s release as proof of political vendetta, while the BJP points to the ongoing investigations in Punjab as proof of corruption. Jain’s bail has sharpened the campaign even as it settles neither claim.
“What did he achieve from this?” AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal asked of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Satyendar Jain’s case. “Twenty-four hours a day, you just keep thinking about sending people to jail. You have no interest whatsoever in running the country. Nor do you even know how to run it,” Kejriwal has said.
AAP leaders want to capitalise on Jain’s arrest in Punjab in particular by telling the people that the BJP was interfering with its government and the election campaigning. AAP’s Delhi unit chief leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said Jain’s arrest was “a mischief” because the BJP did not want him working in Punjab.
“There was no scam that was being investigated for many years. The court said that the case did not even deserve a chargesheet. This is clearly a mischief to disturb a person who had to work in Punjab. We are happy that Satyendar Jain has been granted bail. We want to tell the union government that days of your rowdiness are numbered. He will resume his work,” Saurabh Bharadwaj said.
AAP spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar also said the arrest was a “conspiracy against Punjab”. “This was a political vendetta arrest because Satyender Jain is the co-in-charge of Punjab (AAP). You have seen how the party leaders and their families are being harassed; who will compensate them? If BJP wants to fight us, they should compete with our hospitals and schools,” Priyanka Kakkar said.
The BJP asserts it’s just bail. Delhi BJP Chief Harsh Malhotra said, “Getting bail is part of the legal process and doesn’t mean that he has been given a clean chit. The probe is on. The legal consequences will come out after the agencies submit the report. He will have to go to jail for the sins he committed.”
The ED or CBI action is not limited to Satyender Jain.
More than 16 AAP leaders were arrested and named in corruption cases over the past few years. Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Satyendar Jain and aide Vijay Nair were arrested by the ED, the CBI, or both in the Delhi excise (liquor sale) policy case. A court later discharged them. AAP leader Amanatullah Khan was arrested and chargesheeted in a waqf board-related money-laundering case.
Deepak Singla was arrested in 2026 over an alleged bank fraud and laundering. Punjab minister Sanjeev Arora was arrested the same year in a GST and export-linked probe. Owner of Lovely Professional University Ashok Mittal was searched when he was an AAP MP; he has since switched to the BJP in a group led by Raghav Chadha. Punjab AAP chief Aman Arora has been named through an associate in a land-use matter. The list here is not exhaustive.
But these are investigations, not convictions.
The AAP claims that over 230 CBI and ED cases have been registered against its leaders.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the real motive behind the ED raids and investigations was to browbeat the leaders into defecting. “The message from BJP is loud and clear: either join BJP or face harassment through raids and investigations. The moment they (defectors from the AAP) joined the BJP, the raids stopped. They were then provided security cover by the Centre. Punjab is the land of gurus, saints and martyrs; this land did not bow before Aurangzeb’s atrocities, and it will not bend before Modi either,” Bhagwant Mann said.
Punjab AAP chief and minister Aman Arora is also vocal about the alleged misuse of ED and CBI against political adversaries of the BJP. The ED, in raids conducted in May, linked Arora to a man named Gaurav Dhir of Dhir Constructions, who is accused of getting Change of Land Use (CLU) permissions with forged documents.
Arora, reacting to the allegations, said, “Six CLUs in the matter predated AAP. In case you really want to investigate, you should arrest all Akali-BJP, Congress and AAP leaders, including CM Bhagwant Mann and me.”
The “ED party” allegation against the BJP aside, the AAP is itself facing similar charges of misusing official machinery in the only state it ruled, Punjab, which goes to polls in early 2027.
The Punjab Pollution Control Board allegedly targeted Rajya Sabha MP and industrialist Rajinder Gupta along with others who switched allegiance from the AAP to the BJP in April. A day after he joined the BJP, his factory was slapped with multiple cases, including closure notices, power cuts, FIRs, and action by the vigilance and excise departments. This list is not exhaustive either.
On April 30, a large PPCB team raided Gupta’s Trident Group factory in Barnala, took effluent and groundwater samples, and then issued as many as 17 show-cause notices, which the court later stayed.
AAP workers painted “gaddar” on the walls of premises belonging to Gupta and even cricketer Harbhajan Singh, one of the six Punjab MPs who switched sides. Sandeep Pathak faced two FIRs that the BJP termed “vendetta”.
Shiromani Akali Dal’s Bikram Singh Majithia points to a longer version of the same alleged pattern. An FIR registered under the anti-drugs law in 2021 sent Majithia, a former minister, to the Patiala jail in February 2022 after his anticipatory bail efforts failed. In August 2022, the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted him regular bail, stating there were reasonable grounds to believe he was not guilty of those charges. The government petition against that bail was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2025.
From the same probe team, a June 2025 report alleged assets of Majithia and his wife, MLA Ganieve Kaur, beyond known income. The state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a Prevention of Corruption Act case against Bikram Majithia and arrested him on June 25, 2025, followed by a massive 40,000-page chargesheet. Lower and high courts denied bail, but the Supreme Court granted it on February 2, 2026, noting the completed chargesheet, seven months served, and delays in filing the case.
While the AAP emphasised that bail is not an acquittal, the SAD claimed the ruling exposed political manoeuvring. He later secured anticipatory bail in a separate police case in June 2026 following the civic body elections.
In Punjab, the AAP has also used FIRs and social media takedowns against journalists. On December 12, 2025, Ludhiana cyber police booked RTI activist Manik Goyal and reporters including Maninderjeet Sidhu, Mintu Gurusaria and Mandeep Makkar over posts asking who flew the CM’s helicopter while Mann was in Japan.
The AAP has also filed dozens of Facebook copyright strikes. AAP calls it action on fake news. Press bodies call it a gag.
