New Delhi: The Constitutional crisis in Delhi and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s indefinite sit-in at Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal’s residence entered the ninth day on Tuesday. While the freeze between the Aam Aadmi Party government and the bureaucracy appeared to be nearing a thaw, relations between Delhi government and the Centre continue to remain grave.
On Tuesday, Arvind Kejriwal wrote a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, castigating him for not intervening in the crisis.
In his three-page letter, Kejriwal wrote, “Ab toh gazab hi ho gaya! (Now this is getting ridiculous). My ministers and I have been sitting at Raj Niwas and waiting to meet the LG and the LG is not willing to meet us. Yeh toh ek ajooba hai (this is very peculiar). Nobody in the world will accept that he (LG) is doing this on his own. Everyone is saying this is happening at your behest. I am an insignificant man. I have not come to meet him in a personal capacity but as the elected Chief Minister of the people. This is not an insult to me, but an insult to the people of Delhi. Is it not the Constitutional duty of the LG to meet an elected CM? By not meeting the CM, is the LG not indulging in dereliction of duty?”
He went on to remind the Prime Minister that in May 2015, the Centre took away the Services Department from the Delhi government. This is a power, Kejriwal reminded the PM, that his predecessor Sheila Dikshit had.
“Today, I cannot transfer an officer, I cannot suspend an erring officer or send a corrupt officer to jail. Why did you pass such an order? It is clear that your aim is to handicap the elected government of Delhi,” he wrote.
He accused PM Modi of using the office of the L-G to stall work of the Delhi Government. “After gaining independence, we chose a democratic system of government very carefully. In our system, people elect their own government and that government works according to the wishes of the people and is answerable only to the people. This democratic system will crumble if the central government stops state governments from doing their work on some pretext or the other. I request you, once more, to let us work for the people of Delhi and direct the LG to solve this crisis at the earliest. The people of Delhi will be grateful to you,” Kejriwal said in his letter.
Comments
0 comment