Here's why Centre denied permission to Kejriwal for attending Denmark climate meet

The central government on Wednesday clarified that the permission was denied to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for attending the C-40 Climate Summit in Denmark as it is a mayor-level conference.

Kolkata Mayor and West Bengal Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim is slated to attend the climate meet in Copenhagen from October 9 to 12.

"The West Bengal minister is going (to attend the climate meet in Denmark). This is a mayor-level conference," Union Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at a cabinet briefing.

Kejriwal was to attend the four-day C-40 climate summit. He was to speak on his government's work towards lowering pollution, including the car rationing scheme.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had accused the BJP-led Centre of showing hostility and not giving political clearance to Kejriwal and others for attending the conference.

"This is unfortunate and beyond my understanding that why the Narendra Modi Ji's government is working with such hostility towards us. He (Kejriwal) was not going on vacation but to hold discussions with the mayors of 100 cities of Asia and present a better picture of our country on efforts to abate pollution," the party's leader Sanjay Singh had told ANI on Tuesday.

"How many official visits of Chief Ministers have been cancelled till date? We applied a month ago but could not get the clearance," he had said.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said today that "clearance from political angle was declined" on the application of Kejriwal and seven others, seeking political clearance to attend the climate summit in Denmark.

Last week, the ministry had refused to comment on the matter and said it does not comment on individual requests.

"Normally I do not answer any query on specific political clearance. We get hundreds of requests for political clearance every month from ministers, secretaries and bureaucrats," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had told reporters at a weekly briefing on October 4.