Privileges Committee to examine Vijender Gupta's remarks on House panels

Taking offence at a press statement of BJP legislator Vijender Gupta, in which he urged the LG to scrap "unconstitutional House committees", the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution to send the issue to its Privileges Committee.

Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta had on August 2 issued a press statement in which he termed certain committees of the assembly as "unconstitutional" and through a letter urged Lieutenant Governor (LG) Anil Baijal to dissolve such committees.

Summing up a discussion on the issue, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said that questioning the existence of the committees of the Delhi Assembly was not fair and such statements should not be tolerated.

He said that he himself was an executive (like Gupta) but had not problem with the existence of the committee, then why Gupta was so much worried about their existence and functioning.

"The Assembly Committees play a pivotal role in strengthening the democracy in Delhi and he (Vijender Gupta) does not believe in democracy. These committees target the people who indulge in wrongdoing and it seems Gupta certainly has some connections with such people," Sisodia said.

He added these Committees had tremendous power to oversee the works of the government which helped a lot in bringing transparency and improving the quality of the work.

"Assembly sits three to four times in a year to oversee the progress of the works done by the government, but these committees are the bodies which can continuously take an account of the development works and related issues," the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said.

Gupta had also accused these committees of summoning officers in order to pressurise or threaten them.

Attacking Gupta and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sisodia alleged that Gupta came from a background (political) where "people from his party are not even ashamed of stalking a girl".

"These (BJP and RSS) are the people who are not even ashamed of killing (Mahatma) Gandhi. They were even against the Quit India Movement," Sisodia alleged.

The AAP MLAs, who participated in the discussion, sought an apology from the Leader of Opposition over the matter.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said according to the Constitution, the Delhi Assembly and its committees enjoyed same powers as the Lok Sabha and its committees.

"This House has all the powers to constitute committees. The Leader of Opposition should apologise for calling the assembly committees unconstitutional," Bharadwaj said.

Another AAP legislator Alka Lamba also demanded an apology from Gupta and said that his comments about the assembly committees were "unacceptable".

"These committees have started probing the matters to which the BJP leaders are probably linked, so they are raising questions. They want a backdoor compromise with the committees which is not going to happen," Lamba said.

AAP MLAs Somnath Bharti, Adarsh Shashtri, Nitin Tyagi, Rajesh Gupta, Rituraj, Madanlal and Vishesh Ravi also participated in the discussion.

--IANS

am/nir