AAP’s full statehood issue gimmick: Opposition

The Opposition parties on Saturday slammed the Delhi government’s proposed draft bill for full statehood of the national capital and said that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government tossed the issue to divert attention from its failure.

Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta said that the move by the AAP government to present the draft for full statehood before the people was a fresh attempt to “pick conflict with the Union government”.

“This is a gimmick by the AAP government after total failure to discharge its assigned responsibilities. If the Delhi government was serious for full statehood of Delhi, it should have sent a proposal to the Union government and discussed the matter with them. The chief minister knows well that constitution will have to be amended to provide full statehood to Delhi,” added Mr Gupta.

Mr Gupta alleged that the Delhi government intentionally finds new issues to have conflict with the Union government so that people of Delhi could be misled.

The Congress claimed that Mr Kejriwal raked up the issue to divert the attention of the people from the failure of the second phase of the odd-even scheme. Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken said Mr Kejriwal was trying to hoodwink the people of Delhi on the issue of full statehood.

“The power to make amendments in the Constitution is vested only with Parliament and the Delhi government cannot pass any bill for full statehood for Delhi. For this, the Delhi Assembly has to pass a resolution and forward it to the Central government. It is very strange that though the Mr Kejriwal government has been in power for 15 months now, and if it was serious about full statehood for Delhi, it should have written to the Central government much earlier, instead of dusting the issue now,” Mr Maken said.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Goel termed the statehood issue raised by Delhi government as a “drama like the odd-even scheme”, adding, if it is serious then it should build consensus with other parties.