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On Delhi LG's ‘governance’ jibe, Kejriwal's riposte: ‘Modi, Yogi were also…’
Delhi LG Vinai Kumar Saxena had asked chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to hold regular meetings with him in the “interest of consciously deliberative and conflict free governance.”
Replying to Delhi LG Vinai Kumar Saxena's letter over the resumption of regular meetings, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said he will certainly meet the lieutenant governor and seek a convenient time with his office. Kejriwal also responded to Saxena's backhanded compliment in which he, mentioning the recent letters, said the Delhi chief minister has “started taking governance in the city seriously” after his election campaigns.
“AAP is a national party and as its national convenor, I have to attend to elections campaigns in different parts of the country. Hon'ble Prime Minister, Hon'ble Home Minister and many BJP Chief Ministers like Yogi Adityanath ji, Shivraj Singh ji, Pushkar Dhami ji etc were also campaigning for their party at that time in Gujarat and Delhi,” Kejriwal said.
The chief minister then drew Saxena's attention to the ongoing political tussle over 10 nominated members and appointment of the presiding officer for the election of the mayor that plunged the first meeting of the newly elected MCD House into pandemonium on Friday. AAP termed the nomination of 10 aldermen to the MCD “unconstitutional”, alleging that the state government was “bypassed in the nomination process.”
The LG office dismissed the allegations and said the 10 people were nominated in pursuance of the powers vested in him vide section 3(3)(b)(i) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act. Kejriwal then sought Saxena's clarification over his official position on the term “LG/Administrator” saying “If that be the case, then the elected govt. of Delhi will become irrelevant.”
Reiterating the same on Monday, Kejriwal said, "I had requested you to kindly make your stand public whether this was your position that from now onwards, on all those subjects where the law uses the words "Administrator/LG", elected govt. would be bypassed/ignored and Hon'ble LG would directly deal with the officers and directly run those departments?"
"For instance, all laws and Acts related to electricity, health, water, education etc - all define govt. as "Administrator/LG". So, does it mean that from now on, the power department, education department, health department, water department etc - all these will be directly run by you?"
“Whereas we could discuss all these issues privately over tea, however, these questions are very critical for the future of Delhi and the whole country. Therefore, a public discussion on this issue will be useful.”
