The Centre has denied Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal permission to visit Denmark for a summit as it is a “Mayor-level” event and an appropriate official is being sent from West Bengal, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday.
Mr. Kejriwal was initially scheduled to travel to Denmark on Tuesday as part of an eight-member delegation for a climate summit in Copenhagen, which was to start on Wednesday.
While the Foreign Ministry did not clear Mr. Kejriwal’s travel, it granted permission to West Bengal Minister Firhad Hakim.
“This is a Mayor-level conference and a Bengal Minister is going to participate in it,” Mr. Javadekar said at a press conference on Cabinet decisions, adding: “There is a separate protocol when political functionaries like Chief Ministers are invited.”
The Delhi government had last month said in an official statement that Mr. Kejriwal would address the C40 climate change event in Copenhagen and would speak about his government’s efforts to lower the levels of pollution in the national capital.
The Aam Aadmi Party has criticised the move to deny Mr. Kejriwal the permission to travel to Denmark, saying that he was not going on vacation but was going to tell more than 100 Mayors how Delhi managed to reduce pollution levels by 25%.
‘Defame the country’
Commenting on the cancellation of the CM’s visit to Copenhagen, State BJP president Manoj Tiwari argued that Mr. Kejriwal should explain if he was the Chief Minister or the Mayor of Delhi.
“Till now, Mr. Kejriwal was trying to defame the municipal corporations of Delhi. Now he wants to defame the country in an international summit. This visit may have also wasted public money because he wanted to go with his team,” Mr. Tiwari alleged.
