February 22, 2025

Centre Must Stop Targeting The Delhi Government

By Our Editorial Team
First publised on 2023-03-22 09:57:23

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The Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi-NCR has always been a special target for the Centre, either directly or through the Lieutenant Governor, and the BJP. There have been many spats in the past and even the Supreme Court was involved in some matters. But the latest incident - that of the LG and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) delaying the go-ahead for presenting the budget of the territory - was disturbing. As per the previously announced programme, the budget was to be presented on Tuesday and the Delhi government had submitted the papers - as required by law - to the office of LG V K Saxena in time. But first the LG took his own sweet time in sending the same to the MHA and then the MHA delayed giving the customary permission. The permission is just a formality mandated by law and this is a rare instance of such a delay. It should not have happened.

An elected government must be allowed to work as per law and if it needs permission from other constitutional authorities, such permission, except in extraordinary circumstances (and even then the reasons for the delay must be made public), must be granted without any delay. The constitutional duty of the LG in Delhi is to facilitate the governance of the territory by the elected government and not place hurdles in its path. But successive LG's in Delhi, ever since the NDA came to power at the Centre and AAP in Delhi, have been either sitting on files or denying permission in an outright manner. It is no one's case that the LG has to permit all activities and permission can be denied if the law so permits. But in many cases, it is being seen that this is not the case and delays and objections are mainly to place unnecessary hurdles. This confrontationist attitude must stop.