“I am the elected chief minister of Delhi. Who are you?,” Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asked lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena in a hard-hitting speech on the floor of the Assembly on Tuesday, in the course of which he claimed that during a recent meeting, the latter said that it was his (the LG’s) work that had ensured the BJP won 104 seats in the municipal elections, even though it was not in a position to win 20, and that the party would win all seven parliamentary seats in the UT in 2024, as well as the next Assembly elections.
Kejriwal’s 21-minute speech came even as a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court was hearing a related case, on the division of powers between the LG and the CM in Delhi. The current position, as laid out in a July 4, 2018 order of the apex court is that land, police and public order come under the Union government and, therefore, the LG, with the rest of the subjects being under the elected government of Delhi. In his speech, Kejriwal said that when he referred to the court’s ruling, the LG responded that this could be the court’s opinion.
No response was available from LG’s office on the CM’s remarks. But, after the CM-LG meeting, a Raj Niwas official had said that all statements attributed by the CM to the LG after the meeting about the orders of the Supreme Court, powers as the administrator, supremacy over subjects, and directions to officers were misleading, patently false and fabricated and twisted to suit a particular agenda.
The trigger for Kejriwal’s angry speech was the LG’s decision to seek a cost-benefit analysis on sending Delhi school teachers for training to Finland. Kejriwal said in his speech that the LG was in no position to ask for such an analysis.
But the larger issue is the constant friction between the Capital’s elected government and the LG, who, Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party has claimed, is working towards the interests of the Bharatiya Janata Party which has comprehensively lost the last two assembly elections in the Union territory. From the government’s advertising spend to appointment of aldermen in the municipal corporation, from garbage to air pollution, the two have sparred over a range of issues. Kejriwal referred to this in his speech, saying that while he had always been a good student (who came top of his class), none of his teachers had checked his homework as diligently as the LG scanned government files, pointing to small mistakes.
Kejriwal’s speech came a day after the AAP led protests over the school teachers training issue.
“The LG is openly threatening the CM. His target is not to work, but to stall the functioning of the elected government and defame CM and the AAP,” Kejriwal said while speaking in the Assembly on a resolution condemning the LG’s move to “stop government teachers” from going to Finland for training.
Kejriwal said salaries of employees of departments such as the Delhi Transport Corporation, mohalla clinics, the Delhi Jal Board were stopped two months before the December 4 MCD polls to hurt AAP’s prospects.
“A day after the MCD election results were announced [on December 7] the salaries were disbursed. I asked the LG about this, and he said he did not do that. Then I asked the LG to suspend the officers behind the disruptions.”
Kejriwal alleged Saxena disallowed the foreign training programme for 30 Delhi government schoolteachers and asked the training be done in India. “It is because of the feudal mindset which believes that poor children should not get a good education. The LG also has the same mindset. Why should we get the training for schoolteachers in India? Are our students less capable than anyone else?”
Kejriwal said the Delhi government has so far sent around 1,000 teachers for foreign training and they have played a key role in improving the quality of education in the UT.
“The LG has put objections on the files twice. It means that the LG has ill intention. Even if we send the file for the third time, the file will meet the same fate,” Kejriwal said.
He said he read out the Supreme Court judgement on power sharing in Delhi to the LG when the two met on Friday to sort out their differences after months. “The LG said it might be the opinion of the court. I told him that his remarks were in contempt of the court… The court orders are not opinions but orders. Then the LG said the Constitution has written that LG is the administrator and he has supreme power.”
