Chandigarh, Oct 15: A day after Jaipur resident Navneet Chaturvedi was booked for allegedly forging the signatures of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators in his Rajya Sabha bypoll nomination papers, AAP Punjab president Aman Arora on Tuesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of shielding him from arrest and attempting to “steal” the election.
Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh, Arora alleged that Chaturvedi had “tried to reach the Rajya Sabha using forged signatures of AAP MLAs.” According to the Punjab Police, multiple FIRs were filed after several AAP legislators complained that their signatures on Chaturvedi’s nomination papers were fake.
“After Sanjeev Arora resigned from the Rajya Sabha, Chaturvedi submitted his nomination for the vacant seat. On October 6, he filed one set of papers without signatures of the proposers and another with forged signatures of MLAs Rajneesh Dahiya and Fauja Singh Sarari, among others,” said Arora. Both Dahiya and Sarari were present at the briefing.
Arora said that when the forgery came to light, Ropar MLA Dinesh Kumar Chadha, whose signature was among those allegedly forged, filed a complaint, prompting an FIR late Monday night. “On Tuesday, a local court issued arrest warrants, and when Ropar Police went to Chandigarh to arrest him, the Chandigarh Police intervened and whisked him away in a government vehicle,” he claimed.
He accused the Chandigarh Police of acting on directions from the Centre. “This episode exposes the collusion between the BJP, the Union home ministry, and the Chandigarh administration—just like what we saw in the mayoral polls,” Arora said, demanding that Chaturvedi be handed over to the Ropar Police.
During scrutiny, Chaturvedi’s nomination papers were rejected after several AAP MLAs confirmed that their signatures had been forged.
Dismissing the allegations, Punjab BJP working president Ashwani Sharma said, “What is the need for the BJP to get involved in this Rajya Sabha seat when we have only two members in the house?”
