‘If INDIA bloc comes to power after June 4, I will be back next day’

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday claimed he will be back from the Tihar jail on June 5 if the INDIA bloc comes to power after the election results are announced even as he alleged that efforts were made to break and humiliate him during his prison stay.

Arrested in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, Kejriwal has been granted interim bail by the Supreme Court till June 1 to campaign in the Lok Sabha elections. He will have to surrender and go back to jail on June 2.

June 1 is the last day of the seven-phase elections and the votes will be counted on June 4.

Addressing his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors, Kejriwal said he was under CCTV surveillance and 13 officers were monitoring the feed.

Talking about the election campaigning of the INDIA bloc, he said for the past few days, he has received plenty of invitations from various parties and candidates of the opposition bloc from all over the country. “I will try and go to most of the places in the next 21 days to campaign for the INDIA bloc. I have been receiving invitations from individual candidates as well, from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and so on. I will try and go to as many places as possible and work hard for election campaigning,” he said.

Asking them to work hard, he said, “I have to go back to jail on 2nd June. I will be watching the results on June 4 from the jail. If you work hard and make the INDIA bloc win, I will come back on June 5.

If there is any lack of effort, then let’s see when we will meet,” he said. Kejriwal said when he was arrested, he was feeling that he would have to stay in jail for six to seven months.

“I was mentally prepared for that. I had absolutely no expectation that I would come back in the middle. Miracle happened. The judgment given by the Supreme Court on Friday seems as if God has performed a miracle,” he said.

The Delhi CM, sharing the ordeal of his days in jail, said two CCTV cameras were installed in his cell, “to see what time I wake up, what time I go to bed, what time I eat food, which TV channels I watch, what time I wake up at night and what time I go to the bathroom”.“These recordings were played in the offices of the 13 officers. These people were continuously monitoring each and everything that I was doing.

“We have also learnt that the jail authority had also given a feed of the same to the Prime Minister’s Office. Modi ji was monitoring the CCTV camera to keep an eye on my activities. Why? Because he wanted to know if Kejriwal was broken,” he claimed.