AAP- Delhi

For last one  week  Chief Minister of Delhi  Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been sitting in Dharna at Delhi’s Lieutenant  Governor (LG)  Anil Baijal’s office along with his deputy CM and 2 other colleagues (ministers). The troubled started in Feb 2018 when Delhi Govt Chief Secretary  Anshu Prakash made an announcement that he was man handled by AAP’s MLAs in presence of  Arvind Kejriwal at CMs residence. After this the officers insisted an public apology from the CM for the assault that they would suffer no physical harm in future. With neither the apology nor safety pledge forthcoming, officers have been skipping routine meetings sought by AAP ministers, limiting their engagement with the latter only to matters of urgent public importance.

As you all are aware that trouble with LG started soon after Kejriwal took oath as CM of Delhi, as CM thought he is supreme  as far as Delhi is concerned. He forgot that Delhi being a special state, actually it is a union territory, but given a term of state because some provisions are made for Delhi are different from other union territories. From the day one AAP started demanding full state hood for Delhi, forgetting that Delhi is also the capital of the nation and hence all the controls of Delhi can not be passed on to Delhi CM. AAP govt went on this matter to Delhi High Court, which gave its verdict in 2016 that basically national capital remains a union territory  with LG as Administrative Head. Against the verdict of High Court AAP went to Supreme Court, the top court heard the matter for 15 days and reserved its verdict on 6 Dec 2017 against the verdict of  High Court, which had held that the LG enjoyed primacy in governance.

Presently AAP govt is blaming the IAS officers are not Co operating with AAP govt and it looks like they are on strike, and are asking LG to resolve the issues with IAS officers, so that the Delhi govt can function. Therefore to pressurise  LG , they are sitting at Dharna in LG’s office.

Yesterday Delhi’s IAS Officers association held an unprecedented press conference to counter AAP’s claim that its officers are not on strike and said that they are being targeted and victimised. The information that IAS officers in Delhi are on strike is completely false and baseless. We are attending all the meetings, all departments are doing the work. The spoke person further added that we are feeling frightened and victimised, and are being used to settle political scores.

From the onset of the Dharna, AAP has put forward 3 basic demands to LG:

1. That all IAS officers immediately end their strike and start ending meetings with ministers, so that execution of critical public welfare projects and schemes is not affected.

2. That all truant and unscrupulous IAS officers, who instigated the strike and enhanced the deadlock with political executive be brought to task and LG being administrative head, should ensure that something like this never happens in future.

3. That LG, instead of resorting to file notings, should immediately approve the AAP govt’s scheme of Doorstep Delivery of Ration, which aims to overhaul the leaky inefficient Public Distribution System In Delhi, by delivering the monthly ration supplies at doorstep of ration card holders, majority of which are living below poverty line.

Yesterday 4 CMs from opposition parties, Mamta Banerjee( TMC)  of West Bengal, Chandrababu Naidu(TDP) of Andhra Pradesh,  HD Kumaraswamy (JD S) of Karnataka and Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala, requested PM Narendra Modi  to help and resolve crisis of Delhi govt.

Surprisingly, Congress has not associated with the move to support Kejriwal with the party’s Delhi leaders arguing that the CM’s charge of LG Anil Baijal was preventing the AAP govt from functioning was misplaced. The party has said that Kejriwal failed to understand the constitutional scheme for Delhi, and the fact that being CM of Union Territory of Delhi,  he can not have the same powers as CM of other full scale states. Ex CM of Delhi Shiela Dixit said that I could work with the same constitutional guidelines as CM for 3 terms, and did what was good for Delhi citizens.  Before Shiela Dixit BJP was ruling Delhi for one term.

In my personal opinion Kejriwal’s problem is his big ego, after winning Delhi’s election with thumping majority, he thought he has become so big that he started challenging PM, and for any thing wrong happening in Delhi he started blaming PM. The fact is that there are so many departments where he can work without centre’s interference, but he is only interested in the departments which are under centre, and from day 1 started demanding full statehood for Delhi, which is highly unlikely. Now he knows that within approx 18 months his tenure will end, and now he has started talking of so many pending works. He is already in loggerheads with IAS officers and now and then makes the statement that the officers are working for LG and BJP bosses.This way he will never be able to solve the impasse with IAS officers , and hence the request has come from other CM to the PM to resolve this issue.

Let us wait and watch the further developments.
Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs.