Aam Aadmi Party convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav here on Wednesday to marshal support against the passage of ‘The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Ordinance, 2023’ in the Rajya Sabha.
Akhilesh Yadav, promising support to AAP in the Rajya Sabha, said, “This ordinance is anti-democratic. The intent of the ordinance is anti-democratic, I assure you that SP will support you.”
“The Bharatiya Janata Party is irritated by the good work done by the Delhi government in the field of health and education,” Yadav said, adding that the BJP was attempting to weaken the Delhi government as it was afraid of losing all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2024.
The ordinance was promulgated by the Centre on May 19 and the bill for replacing the ordinance is likely to be introduced in both the Houses of Parliament during the coming monsoon session.
Kejriwal has been reaching out to leaders of non-BJP parties to garner support against the Centre’s ordinance on control of services in the national capital. The AAP wants to ensure that the Centre’s bid to replace the ordinance with a bill is defeated when the bill is introduced in Parliament.
Kejriwal said, “It took us eight years to get back our rights after protracted legal battle, it took just eight days for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to snatch back those rights.”
He said the Central government in 2015, by a notification, divested the Delhi government of control over the bureaucracy. “We challenged the matter in the Supreme Court. The five-judge constitution bench of the apex court ruled in our favour on May 11.Just after eight days, the Central government in the late hours of May 19 neutralised the court order by issuing an ordinance to nullify the court’s order,” Kejriwal said.
“We could do nothing against the unconstitutional ordinance. May 19 was deliberately chosen by the Central government to issue the ordinance so that we could not challenge the ordinance in the apex court as the Supreme Court closed on that evening for summer vacation,” Kejriwal charged.
“The BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha and it can get the bill passed in the lower House. In Rajya Sabha, the BJP has only 93 members in a House of 238 members. If all the non-BJP political parties are united on this issue then the ‘The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023’, can be easily defeated,” Kejriwal said, adding that the defeat of the bill in the Rajya Sabha would prove to be the semi-final before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and it would send a strong message that the BJP was not being voted back to power in 2024.
The AAP supremo said if the elected government had no control over the bureaucracy then the government could never discharge its duties towards the people and perform as per the mandate given by the people.
He said the ordinance issued by the Central government was unconstitutional. “We will challenge the ordinance in the Supreme Court when the court reopens after the summer vacation,” he added.
Kejriwal said Akhilesh Yadav had promised to support the AAP and oppose the bill in both the Houses of Parliament.
Kejriwal was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who is also from the AAP, and Delhi minister Atishi.
Mann said the BJP was pursuing the agenda to destabilise the non-BJP governments in different states.