Even as the impasse between the Delhi Government and the Lieutenant-Governor continued, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a notification on Friday reiterating the constitutional validity of the latter’s role in the Capital’s administration.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia spent the day seeking legal opinion pertaining to further recourse available to the Delhi Government in the matter which, according to insiders, was gearing up for a pitched legal battle on the issue. “There are several lacunae in the notification; we are in the process of evaluating it legally and do not rule out dragging the Central Government to court,” a senior official told The Hindu . “We are prepared to take the matter to its legal conclusion; the issue needs to be settled once and for all,” the official added.
Issued late on Thursday evening, the said notification also reminded the Aam Aadmi Party-led (AAP) Government about the limited jurisdiction of its anti-graft body, the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), against which a resolution had been passed by the Delhi Legislative Assembly in March.
“Subject to his control and further orders, the Lieutenant Governor of the National Capital Territory of Delhi,” the notification said, “shall in respect of matters pertaining to Public Order, Police, Land and Services...exercise powers and discharge the functions of the Central Government, to the extent delegated to him time from time by the President.”
The notification clearly left matters pertaining to services of bureaucrats to be settled by the L-G allowing him discretionary power to seek the opinion of the Chief Minister as and when the former deemed it fit. It also reiterated the fact that the Delhi Government’s ACB, vide a notification in July 2014 that limited its jurisdiction to officials of the Delhi Government, was still in force thus, effectively clipping its wings.
The Delhi Assembly had, in March, passed a resolution against the said notification alleging that it diluted the powers of the said anti-graft body.
