BJP parliamentarian Subramanian Swamy thinks Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung is “unsuitable” for the job and should be replaced with somebody loyal to the RSS and its affiliates.
Swamy’s pitch against Jung came on a day when chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accused the lieutenant governor of undermining the Aam Aadmi Party government in the city by transferring officials in charge of flagship projects. The BJP leader, however, shares no goodwill with Kejriwal either.
“In my opinion, this LG of Delhi Mr. Jung is unsuited for this high post. He is another 420 like Kejri. We need a Sangh person in Delhi,” he tweeted on Tuesday.
His tweet didn’t find support even within the Sangh, though. The BJP ignored the demand while Kejriwal’s AAP, which has been at loggerheads with Jung since coming to power in 2015, refused to react.
Swamy is not the first BJP lawmaker to call for replacing Jung. But despite Jung and Kejriwal’s longstanding acrimony, the chief minister tweeted on September 26, 2015: “Removing him will not help. His successor would also do the same if PMO kept interfering… Real solution is PMO should stop interfering in Delhi.”
{{/usCountry}}Swamy is not the first BJP lawmaker to call for replacing Jung. But despite Jung and Kejriwal’s longstanding acrimony, the chief minister tweeted on September 26, 2015: “Removing him will not help. His successor would also do the same if PMO kept interfering… Real solution is PMO should stop interfering in Delhi.”
{{/usCountry}}The Delhi lieutenant governor is appointed by the Union government and reports to the home ministry.
For his part, Swamy is known to be one of the reasons behind RBI governor Raghuram Rajan’s decision not to extend his three-year stint which ends this September.
An appointee of the previous UPA government, the 53-year-old Rajan announced he will not seek a second term and go back to academia. The announcement followed personal criticism from a section within the ruling BJP, especially parliamentarian Swamy who said Rajan was “mentally not fully Indian” and should be sacked.
Before he joined the BJP, Swamy, a Harvard professor-turned-politician, was a Janata Party leader and described himself as “some kind of Clint Eastwood who single-handedly can destroy someone, or at least his reputation”.
Swamy is credited for engineering the fall of the first NDA government that lasted 13 days in 1998. He arranged a meeting of J Jayalalithaa and Sonia Gandhi — two leaders became his bitterest rivals later — to not support the Vajpayee government.
The Indian Express reported in 1993 that Swamy, the Janata Party chief then, sought a ban on the Shiv Sena and called RSS and its wings terrorist organisations.