“ Waqt aane pe bata denge tujhe ae aasman, hum abhi se kya batayein kya hamare dil mein (When the time comes, we shall show thee, O heaven/For why should we tell thee now, what lurks in our hearts?),” Najeeb Jung, who resigned as Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi on Thursday, had said this at a rare interaction with the media following a Delhi High Court verdict in August that held him as the supreme administrator of the national capital.
On Thursday, however, the career bureaucrat — infamously dubbed the “undo button” by the State government — in complete contrast to the couplet he had quoted, suddenly announced his resignation shocking not only the Aam Aadmi Party dispensation but also the Union Home Ministry and even his own staff.
Sources in Raj Niwas said Mr. Jung, who took over from Tejendra Khanna in July 2013, had been “for a long time” contemplating a return to academics, which his office described as “his first love” in an official statement.
The announcement caught even Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by surprise following which he got in touch with Mr. Jung over the phone and promised to pay him a brief visit before proceeding for a scheduled trip to Jaipur on Friday morning.
The abrupt resignation comes less than a month after the three-member Shunglu Committee, which was scrutinising over 400 files related to alleged administrative lapses in the AAP government’s decisions, submitted its report to his office on November 27.
Sources in the Delhi government are using this to link Mr. Jung’s exit to “not being able to find anything against the AAP government”.
Mr. Jung’s nearly three-and-a-half year tenure was mostly marked by bitter confrontation with the AAP government on a range of issues, including jurisdiction and powers, that virtually brought governance to a halt on many occasions.
