Amid on-going constitutional tussle between the Delhi Government and the Raj Niwas, the three-day Assembly Session from Monday is expected to be a stormy with the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) likely to raise the issue of the Lieutenant Governor's alleged interference in the functioning of the Government and appointment of MCD aldermen and day to day interferences in the elected Government functioning.
Though the current session has tentatively been decided to run for three days from January 16, but the session may extend it by a day or two if the need for more sessions to discuss administrative challenges and issues was felt by the government.
The issue of the Lieutenant Governor nominating aldermen in MCD and presiding officer to conduct the mayoral poll which led to tussle in the MCD, stopping Delhi government school teachers from travelling to Finland for training, CBI visit to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s office which the AAP termed it a raid, L-G’s order to recover Rs 161 crore from the AAP for advts, food truck policy, mohalla clinics and worsening law and order situation in the wake of increasing crime rate and Anjali Singh hit and drag case are likely to dominate the three days session of Delhi Assembly.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia will be laying the copies of the annual report of the Delhi Technological University for the year 2020-2021, the CAG audit report on the annual accounts of the Netaji Subhas University of Technology for the period from 2009-10 to 2017-18, along with an action-taken report, in the House.
He is also expected to introduce the Delhi Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2023, according to the List of Business of the House.
Earlier stepping up his attack on Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday called him an “obstructionist functioning and interference into the elected government of Delhi”.
He cited a Supreme Court ruling to point out that the LG has no independent decision-making power. Rebutting Kejriwal's statements, a Raj Niwas official said all the statements made by him attributing to the LG were “misleading, patently false and fabricated and twisted to suit a particular agenda”.
The MLAs led b Leader of Opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri demanded on Saturday that the speaker extend the Assembly session to 10 days and allow the Question Hour.At a press conference, Bidhuri, termed the Assembly session starting from January 16 "illegal". "Instead of calling it the winter session, the AAP government has termed it the fourth part of the third session to avoid holding a fixed number of sittings of the House," Bidhuri said. Bidhuri said the BJP MLAs will raise several important issues, including air pollution, the city government's failure to clean the Yamuna river and the poor public transport system in the national capital, during the Assembly session.
The AAP government, led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, is working in a "dictatorial and unconstitutional" manner, Bidhuri alleged, while adding that the saffron party MLAs will urge the speaker to hold the session for 10 days.
"The Government is running away from answering the questions of the MLAs. That is why it is trying to completely remove the Question Hour from the Assembly session," Bidhuri alleged.