New Delhi:

Delhi Chief Minister Atishi Tuesday alleged that an order was issued by a panel on the “directions of Lt Governor VK Saxena” for demolition of multiple Hindu and Buddhist religious structures, a charge refuted by the Governor’s office as “cheap politics”.

The Lt Governor secretariat in a statement said neither are any temples, mosques, churches or any other place of worship being demolished, nor has any file in this regard was received by it.

In a letter to Mr Saxena, the chief minister said she was informed that the ‘Religious Committee’, in a meeting on November 22, ordered for demolition of the religious structures in the national capital.

It has been decided by the Religious Committee “on your directions, and with your approval” to demolish multiple religious structures across Delhi, the chief minister claimed.

In a sharp reply, the Lt Governor secretariat alleged that the chief minister is playing “cheap politics” to divert attention from her as well as her predecessor Arvind Kejriwal’s “failures”.

“If at all, the Governor has issued strict instructions to the police to maintain extra vigil against forces who may indulge in deliberate vandalism for political benefits. His instructions are being strictly followed, as was witnessed during the just gone Christmas celebrations which did not see any untoward incident,” the Lt Governor secretariat said.

In her letter, Atishi said the list of religious structures to be demolished includes many temples and Buddhist places of worship. The religious structures were situated at West Patel Nagar, Dilshad Garden, Sunder Nagri, Seema Puri, Gokal Puri and Usmanpur, as per the list furnished by the chief minister.

Atishi requested Mr Saxena in her letter to prevent “demolition” of the religious structures, saying it would hurt the sentiments of the communities concerned.

Earlier, all decisions of the Religious Committee were sent to the Governor’s office via chief minister and the home minister, she said, adding the government would then ensure that no religious sentiments were hurt due to such action, she said.

The chief minister said an order was issued last year by the Lt Governor’s office stating that demolition of religious structures is a matter related to “public order” and would be directly under the purview of Mr Saxena.

“Since then the work of the Religious Committee has been directly monitored by you. All files of the Religious Committee are routed from the Home department to the Lt Governor office, completely bypassing the chief minister and the home minister,” she said in the letter to Mr Saxena.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena – for so long at odds with the ruling Aam Aadmi Party – suddenly offered words of praise for Chief Minister Atishi Friday, calling her “a thousands times better” than her predecessor and AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal, with whom the Lieutenant Governor has had several tempestuous run-ins – on legal, administrative, and governance issues – over the past months.

Speaking at the convocation of the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women this afternoon, Mr Saxena declared himself pleased the current Chief Minister is a woman.

“… and I can confidently say she is a thousand times better than her predecessor,” Mr Saxena said, throwing a glance at the Chief Minister, on stage with him, as he did so.

Atishi was sworn in on September 21 after a brief tussle within the AAP over who would replace Mr Kejriwal. Arvind Kejriwal resigned days earlier – a statement move after securing bail in the controversial and alleged liquor policy scam case and before the next year’s election.

Mr Kejriwal declared he would seek a “certificate of honesty” from the people of Delhi.

READ | Arvind Kejriwal Resigns After Choosing Atishi As His Replacement

Mr Saxena didn’t always have kind words for Atishi.

In April, while Mr Kejriwal was in jail, he ripped into her and party colleague Saurabh Bhardwaj for “a lack of seriousness” when summoned to his office to discuss “routine works of governance”.

READ | “Lame Excuses”: Delhi LG Slams AAP After Ministers Snub Meetings Call

Also on the LG’s firing list on that occasion was former Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot; Mr Gahlot, who was on the shortlist to succeed Mr Kejriwal, has since jumped to the BJP.

READ | BJP, With Kailash Gahlot At Fore, Launches ‘Sheeshmahal‘ Protest

As recently as last month the Lieutenant-Governor slammed Mr Kejriwal for not implementing the centre’s flagship health insurance scheme – the Ayushman Bharat – during his term as Chief Minister.

Dismissing the Delhi government’s own scheme – which he called “a web of illusion” – Mr Saxena also accused Mr Kejriwal of suppressing reports by central auditors.

The two also traded multiple barbs while Mr Kejriwal was jailed on corruption charges connected to the liquor policy case; this included battles over the nomination of aldermen to the Municipal Corporation and claims Mr Saxena was “stalling” the budget for no reason.

In fact, Mr Kejriwal’s government has long argued the BJP, in power at the centre, has a stranglehold on Delhi via the Lieutenant Governor, who was nominated by that party.

READ | AAP “Fishing In Congress’ Waters” As Arvind Kejriwal Plots Re-Election Bid

The AAP is widely seen as facing as stern test to win a third consecutive Assembly election, particularly after persistent attacks from the BJP (and on-paper allies Congress) over issues like the air quality crisis and the ‘sheeshmahal‘ controversy swirling around the ex-Chief Minister.

With input from PTI

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New Delhi:

The tussle between the Centre and the Delhi government over not implementing Ayushman Bharat escalated on Wednesday with Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena hitting out at AAP chief and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, claiming that he had deprived people of the benefits of the healthcare scheme to prevent the “false model” promoted by him from getting “exposed”. 

In a lengthy post on X in Hindi, Mr Saxena said he does not pay attention to Mr Kejriwal’s baseless statements but was forced to do so this time because it concerned the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, which benefits crores of Indians. 

“You have kept lakhs of people of Delhi deprived of this scheme till now only because of the fear that its implementation may reveal the truth of the false health model being promoted by you and your habit of taking false credit for everything may get exposed,” Mr Saxena claimed, adding that Mr Kejriwal had opposed Ayushman Bharat because he wanted his name associated with it. 

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi had criticised the Delhi and West Bengal governments for failing to implement the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme out of “political interests”, the AAP chief had accused the PM of indulging in politics over public health. In a post on Tuesday, he had also questioned the benefits under the scheme, saying the Comptroller and Auditor General had found several irregularities, and claimed a similar initiative by the Delhi government had benefited lakhs of people. 

Continuing his scathing attack, Mr Saxena said the Delhi government’s health department had recommended implementing the Ayushman Bharat scheme in June 2018 and the then health minister had given permission for doing so. 

“After that, in August 2018, your government talked about naming the Ayushman Bharat scheme ‘Chief Minister Aam Aadmi Health Insurance Scheme Ayushman Bharat’. The Government of India, which bears most of the cost of this scheme, also agreed to your self-glorification by simply asking you to use your name after ‘Ayushman Bharat’,” the lieutenant governor wrote. 

He said that the implementation of the scheme was also announced in the Delhi Assembly in 2020-21 but Mr Kejriwal’s “hunger for publicity” has not allowed it to happen.

‘Web Of Illusion’

Strongly criticising the Delhi health model, Mr Saxena termed it a “web of illusion” created by Mr Kejriwal’s “propaganda machinery”.

“You have been suppressing the CAG reports of the health department for years. You do not allow these CAG reports to be presented in the Vidhan Sabha lest they expose your web of illusions. Perhaps Delhi would be the only example where the High Court orders the health minister to appear in person and asks him to make medicines available to the people. Perhaps Delhi is the only example where the honourable courts had to give orders to repair the CT scan machine in the biggest hospital of the Delhi government,” he said. 

The lieutenant governor also accused the Delhi government of not revising the “Essential Drug List” since 2013. 

“In the last 10 years, the people of Delhi have been very troubled by your hollow health model. I hope that you (Mr Kejriwal) will put politics aside, accept the truth and implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme for the people of Delhi as soon as possible. Since you are no longer the chief minister, you will probably not feel the need to name the Ayushman Bharat scheme after the chief minister,” Mr Saxena sneered. 

‘More Procedures Covered’

BJP’s IT Cell head Amit Malviya also took to X to “expose” Mr Kejriwal’s lies on Ayushman Bharat and the Delhi healthcare programme and said that while the former chief minister has claimed that there is no upper limit under the ‘Delhi Arogya Kosh’, the cap is actually Rs 5 lakh.

This post exposes Arvind Kejriwal’s lies on Ayushman Bharat and Delhi’s Healthcare Programme. Read.

Arvind Kejriwal has been refusing to implement the Ayushman Bharat Yojana in Delhi. He is citing the following reasons:

1. As per Arvind Kejriwal, Ayushman Bharat offers only a… https://t.co/Mf0mDDkwqM

— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) October 30, 2024

Among other things, Mr Malviya also said that the Delhi scheme does not factor in people who are over the age of 70 and are not voters within the national capital and that the Ayushman Bharat covers many more procedures. 

AAP’s Take

Mr Kejriwal had said he had yet to meet a person who got treatment through the Ayushman Bharat scheme and claimed that, under the Delhi government’s initiative, each person in the city receives free medical treatment and the government bears the entire cost whether it’s a 5-rupee pill or treatment worth Rs 1 crore.

Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj also claimed that Ayushman Bharat is a “failed” scheme and said poor patients from states like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan – where the scheme had been implemented – visited hospitals in the capital for surgeries.

“Delhi government hospitals provide free treatment unlike the paid treatment provided in BJP-ruled states. Delhi government health schemes are far more effective than Ayushman Bharat scheme,” he asserted.

Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena on Friday approved a proposal of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to terminate the services of all civil defence volunteers with effect from November 1 this year, with AAP government sources saying they will approach the Supreme Court if this happens, setting off a fresh tussle between the two sides.

The lieutenant governor also directed the chief minister to consider recruiting the volunteers to be terminated as Home Guards.

The development came hours after the chief minister asked Delhi Home Minister Kailash Gahlot to appoint the civil defence volunteers as Home Guards and depute them as bus marshals.

“Approving the proposal to end the CDVs’ illegal recruitment and deployment, Saxena has raised serious livelihood concerns and directed the CM that the CDVs who lose their job in the process should be considered for appointment as Home Guards, about 10,000 positions of whom, the LG has approved recently,” an official at LG Secretariat said.

The LG has also flagged the issue of the CDVs not getting their salary for the past six to seven months and expressed dissatisfaction over the fact the relevant file was sent to him even though the minister concerned and the chief minister were fully competent to take a decision on it on their own, he added.

Amid a tussle between the LG office and the Delhi government, hundreds of civil defence volunteers started an indefinite sit-in protest outside the Delhi Secretariat to demand their unpaid dues.

Following the development, AAP government sources said they will approach the apex court.

“If Delhi LG terminates the services of civil defence volunteers, we will approach the Supreme Court. Some of these volunteers are deployed as bus marshals, who play a crucial role in ensuring women’s safety on buses. We will not compromise on women’s safety,” said a government source.

LG office sources, on the other hand, accused the AAP government sources of “spreading lies” and sharing “misleading” information.

“The proposal to terminate civil defence volunteers was sent to LG office by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, which was only approved by the Lt Governor. Will Delhi government go to Supreme Court against the chief minister?” an LG office source said.

The LG office sources said the proposal to terminate the services of civil defence volunteers was received on October 20.

However, the government source claimed no such proposal was sent to the LG office by the chief minister’s office.

Earlier in the day, Kejriwal asked the Delhi home minister to “appoint” civil defence volunteers as Home Guards and depute them as marshals in public transport buses, officials said.

In a note, the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) said that “legal objection” has been raised about the continuation of civil defence volunteers as bus marshals.

It has been said that civil defence volunteers cannot be engaged in regular duties and that they can be called only during any disaster. “Therefore, it has been suggested that home guards be appointed as bus marshals instead of civil defence volunteers,” said the note.

“I have separately proposed to LG that civil defence volunteers should be continued as bus marshals till adequate number of home guards are appointed in their place. If the bus marshals are suddenly removed, it will not be good for the safety of women travellers,” the chief minister said, according to the note.

Since the existing civil defence volunteers who are working as bus marshals have the required experience, a plan should be developed to appoint them only as home guards and continue them as bus marshals, unless there is any specific complaint against any individual, the chief minister.

“So, if we appoint the same set of people as home guards and put them on bus marshal duty, one one hand the government will get experienced people and on the other hand their jobs will continue,” the note stated.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)