National Conference leader Omar Abdullah again hit out at Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s efforts to secure support from non-BJP parties to counter the Centre’s ordinance on control of Delhi’s officers. In a dig at Kejriwal allegedly rooting for the ruling BJP’s2019 move to scrap Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, Abdullah questioned the irony of the Delhi CM seeking support from other parties now.
“Where was Arvind Kejriwal when Article 370 was scrapped? He supported the government that time and today he is asking for support from other parties,” he asked on Saturday.
The former J&K CM had slammed the controversial ordinance as a “travesty” while also taking a swipe at the AAP claiming that they “happily sided” with the BJP when the state was bifurcated into two separate Union Territories.
Abdullah was responding to a tweet by AAP’s national spokesperson Raghav Chadha, “What next?! A constitutional amendment that any state that votes into power a non-BJP government will be stripped of its legislature and transformed into a centrally administered territory?”
He replied, “What has been done to Delhi is a travesty & goes against the spirit of cooperative federalism. That said Raghav, it’s a shame the AAP didn’t realise the danger of its actions when it happily sided with the BJP in Aug 2019…Sadly your chickens have come home to roost now.”
The Union government had issued a late-night ordinance in May restoring to itself the power over “services” in the national capital, a week after the Supreme Court ruled that the Delhi government has control over bureaucrats assigned to departments under its purview.
AAP has, however, asserted that it never supported the idea of converting the state into a union territory.
When Kejriwal sought Congress’ backing in the battle against BJP, former AICC general secretary Ajay Maken also pointed to instances where the AAP failed to support the Congress, including over the scrapping of special status for J&K.
Kejriwal has so far won over Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and K Chandrashekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi to resist the ordinance in the Rajya Sabha, given that the ruling right-wing party doesn’t hold a majority in the upper house.
