Launching a scathing attack on the AAP government for appointing 21 parliamentary secretaries, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken on Tuesday demanded chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation, saying
Launching a scathing attack on the AAP government for appointing 21 parliamentary secretaries, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken on Tuesday demanded chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation, saying he had lost moral authority to continue as his three present and former Cabinet colleagues were “involved” in cases of corruption, cheating and inefficiency.
On President Pranab Mukherjee’s refusal to give assent to a bill on appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries, Mr Maken said if AAP legislators were not getting any facility, why had the CM introduced a bill in order to legitimise these posts, retrospectively.
Mr Maken said the government through a notification had clearly said that the parliamentary secretaries would not be eligible for any remuneration of any perks of any kind, but they may use the government transport for official purposes only and the office space in the minister’s office would be provided to them to facilitate their work. “This is no longer Aam Aadmi Party (common man’s party). It is now Khas Aadmi Party,” Mr Maken said, adding that the AAP government within one month of assuming power brought up a bill allowing 400 per cent hike in the salaries of its legislators. “They want all sorts of comforts. And they are fooling people in the name of the AAP.”
Mr Maken asked Mr Kejriwal to name any state which has 30 per cent of its legislators functioning as parliamentary secretaries. “In Delhi, we can just have 10 per cent of our legislators as our ministers. That’s the law of the land.” He said that the CM should also know that the high courts had quashed the posts of the parliamentary secretaries in West Bengal, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.
