All India Mahila Congress general secretary Nagma has accused Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi of functioning like a representative of the BJP instead of discharging her duties impartially as titular head of the Union Territory.
Talking to reporters at the party office here on Saturday, she said that Ms. Bedi had been given a post which she must discharge impartially by keeping herself above politics.
Charging Ms. Bedi with delaying approval for files related to various welfare measures including payment of pension to the aged, freedom fighters and sanction of scholarship to SC/ST students and waiver of crop loans, the Congress leader said the negative stand “only betrayed a lack of understanding of the importance of welfare measures”.
Ms. Nagma also took exception to the Lt. Governor taking to Twitter to post politically loaded comments, most recently on the municipal elections in Delhi.
In a broadside against the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre, she said that the BJP was adopting an adversarial approach towards States ruled by Congress and non-BJP governments. Puducherry which was having a Congress government was being ignored by the Centre, she alleged.
Blaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for doing nothing to ensure the security of jawans, many of whom had laid down their lives in Naxal and terror attacks, Ms. Nagma said the Mahila Congress would send bangles through its State units to the Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani to be handed over to the Prime Minister — a retort to Ms. Irani who had, as an MP, called for sending bangles to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for not doing enough to protect the lives of Army men in the wake of a terror attack in 2013. Ms. Nagma later met the Chief Minister.
