New Assembly panel to oversee officers’ conduct

Another committee to examine ‘legality’ of L-G’s message

Two new committees — one each to oversee the conduct of bureaucrats and to ‘examine’ a message from the Lieutenant-Governor challenging the validity of Assembly committees per se — were constituted by the Delhi Assembly here on Monday.

Forty-five committees, new and old, were either formed or reconstituted, including three Financial Committees and five ad hoc ones, elected by the House.

The ad hoc committees have been mandated to probe goings-on related to significant political issues which, a government source pointed out, have in the past become the bone of contention between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and the Centre via Raj Niwas.

One of the new ones among these happens to be the House Committee on Violation of Protocol Norms and Contemptuous Behaviour by Government Officers with MLAs, which has been constituted at a time when the political executive finds itself at loggerheads with the Capital’s bureaucracy following the alleged assault on Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash by AAP MLAs at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence on February 19.

“This is the first time since 2012 that such a committee has been formed based on the formation of a similar one as per directions of the Lok Sabha Speaker to examine complaints of Lok Sabha members related to protocol violations and discourteous behaviour by government officers with them in official dealings,” said Saurabh Bharadwaj, the AAP Greater Kailash MLA and chairman of the committee.

‘Attempt to interfere’

Mr. Bharadwaj will also chair another significant committee mandated to ‘examine’ the message of the L-G challenging the legal validity of such committees conveyed to the Delhi Assembly Speaker on September 13, 2017, which was viewed as an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) Centre to interfere in the business of the AAP government.

The Assembly had last October passed a resolution to form a committee to look into the L-G’s concerns about functioning of standing committees and to examine the alleged unconstitutionality of his message.

Meanwhile, two Special Inquiry Committees, one each to probe ‘alleged irregularities and corruption in bodies that are administering the games of cricket and hockey in the NCT of Delhi’ and to examine the alleged 2002 CNG fitness scam, have also been resurrected.