After getting no response from the Lieutenant- Governor's office, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking permission to attend the World Cities Summit (WCS) in Singapore in the first week of August.
The High Commissioner of Singapore, Simon Wong, had in June invited Kejriwal to attend the summit.
"With great sadness, I have to say that I have not yet received permission to go to Singapore. It was nearly five weeks ago, on June 7, that I had written a letter seeking permission to go to Singapore but I haven't received a reply. It is not right to stop a Chief Minister of any State from visiting such an important event and it is against the interest of the country," Kejriwal wrote to the PM.
The Kejriwal Government sees the invitation from Singapore as an opportunity to take its "Delhi model" of governance to the global platform.
The Chief Minister highlighted in the letter that former US president Donald Trump's wife Melania Trump had expressed her admiration for Delhi's education model and, "Every Indian had felt proud that day".
Previously, former Secretary General of United Nations Ban Ki-moon and former Norway Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, too, had visited the Mohalla Clinics here. Continued on Page 2