Hours before his questioning and subsequent arrest on Sunday, Delhi's deputy CM Manish Sisodia spent 15 minutes at Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi at Rajghat. His party also tweeted a picture of him sitting with his mother before he left home for the CBI office. There were also his emotional appeals to friends and party workers to take care of his ailing wife and a message for Delhi's school children from their affectionate "Manish chacha" to focus on their studies or else he will go without food in jail. According to the Aam Aadmi Party, the schoolchildren of Delhi are enraged at the arrest of their dear "shiksha mantri". "I may have to stay in jail for months but remember we are sons and followers of Bhagat Singh. Bhagat Singh sacrificed his life for this country, jail is just a small thing,” Sisodia said on Sunday. In August 2022, when allegations of irregularities in Delhi's excise policy had first appeared, Sisodia tweeted that he was a descendent of Maharana Pratap, a proud Rajput who would rather lose his life than defect to the BJP.
Sisodia, who took a leap of faith to quit an unremarkable stint in journalism to join Arvind Kejriwal in his right-to-information campaign in Delhi's slums, was mostly considered among activists as the loyal Man Friday of the much sharper and ambitious IRS officer. Fifty-year-old Sisodia, as he said on Sunday, still considers Kejriwal his "political guru". However, as AAP started expanding across India post-2015, Sisodia flowered into an administrator and politician, running the affairs of the Delhi government. Kejriwal did not hold any portfolios, focussing instead on turning AAP into a national political force.
At the time of his arrest, Sisodia was taking care of 18 of the Delhi government's 33 departments. He had shouldered the burden of the health department after the arrest of minister Satyender Jain apart from the demanding PWD, education and finance portfolios. Compared to Sisodia, the workload of other ministers is relatively lighter - Kailash Gahlot handles six portfolios, Raaj Kumar Anand has four, Gopal Rai three and Imran Hussain two. Sisodia, just like Jain, would continue to be a minister without a portfolio, AAP sources said. "We shall soon know if Kejriwal distributes work among other ministers or takes up overseeing departments himself," a party source said. At stake is not only the tabling of Delhi government's budget for 2023-24, preparation for eight G20-related events and rollout of key job-generating schemes that the government has announced but also AAP's plans for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.