Bill will render people of Delhi helpless: Kejriwal

The bill, piloted by Union home minister Amit Shah, was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday after heated discussion

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused the Centre of “back stabbing” the people of Delhi after the Lok Sabha passed the contentious Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, moving a step closer to placing the control of services in the Capital with the Union government.

Union home minister Amit Shah speaks during the discussion on Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023 in Lok Sabha. Delhi CM Arvind Kejrwal has said that it will make Delhi residents “helpless”. (ANI)

The bill, piloted by Union home minister Amit Shah, was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday after heated discussion. After the conclusion of the discussion, Speaker Om Birla suspended AAP’s lone Lok Sabha MP Sunil Kumar Rinku for throwing papers at the chair during the debate.

Delhi chief minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal said the bill is aimed at snatching away the rights of the people of Delhi. “Today in the Lok Sabha, I heard Amit Shah ji speaking on the bill which snatches away the rights of the people of Delhi. He did not have a single valid argument to support the bill. He was just talking about unrelated issues. He also knows that he was doing wrong. This bill is a bill to enslave the people of Delhi. The bill makes them helpless. INDIA will never let this happen,” Kejriwal tweeted.

Once cleared by the Rajya Sabha, the bill will replace the ordinance promulgated by the President on May 19 to allow the Centre to retain control over the bureaucracy in Delhi, effectively rolling back a Constitution bench judgment of the Supreme Court (SC). The Constitution bench ruled that the bureaucracy, excluding in the matters of police, public order and land, is under the control of the elected government in Delhi.

Kejriwal added that the bill also belies the promises made earlier by the BJP, calling for full statehood to Delhi. “BJP has promised time and again to grant full statehood to Delhi. In 2014, Modiji had said he will accord complete statehood to Delhi after becoming the Prime Minister. Today, these people (BJP) stabbed the people of Delhi in the back” Kejriwal said in another tweet.

Participating in the discussion, the Union home minister talked about the unique status of Delhi, a Union Territory with a legislature, and slammed the AAP as a “party which only there to quarrel, and not to serve”.

“The Congress and the BJP have had governments in Delhi. Sometimes, we were in power in Delhi and the Congress was in Centre, and sometimes it was the other way round. There was no fight and our intention was to serve the people. No one tried to snatch more power. In 2015, the situation changed and a party (AAP) formed government. I have no hesitation to stay that the party’s only intention is to quarrel (with the Centre) and not to serve the people,” Shah said in the Lok Sabha.

The AAP has maintained that the bill is against the spirit of the Constitution, the federal structure of the country because it snatches away the rights of an elected government. The party has said that the bill is an attempt to render the elected government of Delhi irrelevant.

AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Thursday accused the Centre of being scared of Kejriwal’s rising political stature.“The BJP is suffering from Kejriwal phobia, and the GNCTD Bill has been brought due to the fear of CM Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity. The home minister (Amit Shah) said that till 2015 everything was going well in Delhi but after 2015, we needed to take the powers from the Delhi government,” Chadha said.

Referring to Shah’s comment during the debate in which he referred to statements by Jawaharlal Nehru, BR Ambedkar and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that there should be no government in Delhi, Chadha said that the home minister should rather look at the statements by BJP’s leaders on Delhi’s statehood . “Instead of looking at statements by Pandit Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Dr Ambedkar, Amit Shah should look up the statements of BJP leaders between 1980-1990 and 2000. BJP veteran LK Advani brought Delhi Statehood Bill, 2003 to make Delhi a full state, and said that the Delhi government should get all the powers. Former BJP CMs late Sahib Singh Verma and late Madan Lal Khurana used to say that Delhi should have its own government and it should get the status of a full state. If Amit Shah would read the statements by senior leaders of his own party, he would not need to refer to the statements by Pandit Nehru,” Chadha said.

Supporting the need for bringing the bill, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said it was needed to end the “anarchy and corruption” under the AAP’s rule since 2015. “The country was shocked when Arvind Kejriwal staged a sit-in at Rajpath, disrupting the preparations for the Republic Day 2014. After the May 11 Supreme Court decision, the Arvind Kejriwal government started harassing officials engaged in probing various scams of the Delhi government. Kejriwal wanted the officers to hand over the files pertaining to liquor, bungalow construction and snooping scams to him, and write favourable report. It became impossible for the officials to run the administration. Under such circumstances the central government had to bring the ordinance to maintain the dignity of the national Capital,” said Sachdeva.