Satyendar Jain Arrested Aap Punjab Elections Stp Scam Bjp

Following Aam Aadmi Party’s Punjab co-in charge Satyendar Jain’s arrest on Tuesday, months ahead of elections in the state, the party has lashed out against the timing of the arrest, calling it an attempt to derail its re-election bid.

Jain, a former Delhi minister, was among six people arrested by Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) on Tuesday in a multi-crore sewage treatment plant (STP) tender fraud case, said officials.

“This has been done because of the Punjab election,” said Jain, who had been appointed the AAP’s Punjab co-in-charge in March 2025, to reporters while being escorted for production before a Delhi court on Wednesday afternoon.

A key member of the AAP leadership, Jain served as a minister in all three AAP governments in Delhi. Beyond the Capital, he has also been entrusted with party affairs in several states, including leading the party’s 2022 election campaign in Himachal Pradesh.

The AAP had suffered a debacle in Himachal, and had to forfeit deposits in all 67 seats it had contested in. One of the factors that the party and observers attributed this dismal outcome to was Jain’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in May 2022 — months ahead of the November 2022 election — stunting the party’s organisational mobilisation in the state. He was released on bail in October 2024.

AAP’s victory in Punjab in 2022 was the first and only time so far that the party has been able to form a government outside Delhi. With it being voted out of power from Delhi last year, the Punjab election is critical to it.

Against this backdrop, the AAP has alleged a pattern in the timing of Jain’s arrest.

AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal went on an offensive against the BJP in a series of posts on X.

“Satyendra Jain ji has once again been arrested at the behest of the BJP. Just a short while ago, everyone still remembers the ordeal they had put him through by putting him in jail. The previous case was fabricated, and this case will also be proven to be fake,” he stated.

Party MP Sanjay Singh called the arrest of AAP leaders in the run-up to elections a “BJP policy”. “Before the Delhi elections, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Satyendra Jain and I were all arrested. The aim was only one, to disturb Delhi’s election. To win it in any way possible. The same thing they are doing now before Punjab elections,” he said.

Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh on Wednesday afternoon, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann echoed Kejriwal.

“The typical modus operandi of BJP is that wherever elections are taking place, they will pick up AAP leaders and push them into jail. It is for courts of law to decide if somebody is guilty or not. Whatever they did by keeping Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh in jail, they are doing here again. I am sure the way both of them came out and no case made out for them, the same will be the case with Satyendra Jain,” he said.

The case in which Jain has been arrested now is from 2022 when he served as the Delhi Water Minister. It originated from a complaint filed by the Directorate of Vigilance, alleging serious irregularities, manipulation of tender conditions and a criminal conspiracy in the upgradation work of sewage treatment plants in the Capital.

He has four other cases against him filed by different agencies, including the ED alleged money laundering case in which he was arrested in 2022.