The animosity that emerged over the appointment of Shakuntala Gamlin as the acting Chief Secretary by the Lt Governor, against the ruling AAP's opinion, turned full circle with the CBI raids at the Delhi Secretariat in December and the ensuing political firestorm.
Delhi witnessed an unprecedented political acrimony between the Arvind Kejriwal government and the BJP-ruled Centre in 2015 which earlier saw the Aam Aadmi Party making history by storming to power with an overwhelming haul of 67 seats in the 70-member assembly. The animosity that emerged over the appointment of Shakuntala Gamlin as the acting Chief Secretary by the Lt Governor, against the ruling AAP's opinion, turned full circle with the CBI raids at the Delhi Secretariat in December and the ensuing political firestorm.
As the conflict raged on, words flew thick and fast, often lowering the quality of public discourse, and both sides exchanged letters, claiming rightful authority over administrative jurisdiction. As matters came to a head over the appointment of Swati Maliwal as Delhi Commission for Women chief (DCW) in July, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung proclaimed, "In respect to the NCT (national capital territory) of Delhi the Government means the Lieutenant Governor of the NCT of Delhi." Steps towards fulfilling key poll promises like slashing water and power tariff, passing the Jan Lokpal Bill and a set of radical measures to combat the growing menace of air pollution under public and judicial pressure would also count among the focal points of the Kejriwal government.
The government announced a series of radical measures to mitigate rising pollution in the city, chief among them the introduction of the odd-even policy, under which vehicles bearing odd and even registration plates plied on alternate days starting today. The first standoff occurred within days of Jung appointing senior bureaucrat Gamlin as acting Chief Secretary of the city government in June, in the temporary absence of K K Sharma, notwithstanding strong reservations by the Kejriwal dispensation which termed the decision as "unconstitutional".
Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) became another sticking point with the body being headed by two simultaneous heads at one point, LG-appointed MK Meena and the other, SS Yadav, authorised by the AAP government. Kejriwal accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking over the anti-graft body using "paramilitary" personnel on June 8, which he said was aimed at weakening AAP's fight against corruption. The genesis of the faceoff over CBI raids at the Delhi Secretariat, at the fag end of the year, lay in a complain filed in July by senior bureaucrat Ashish Joshi, former member-secretary of the Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC), with the ACB against Kejriwal's secretary Rajender Kumar, accusing him of allegedly indulging in corruption.
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