Chief secretary working at ‘behest of BJP’: AAP

New Delhi: The AAP on Tuesday lau-nched a counter-attack on Delhi chief secretary Anshu Prakash, allegedly assaulted by AAP MLAs at CM Arvind Kej-riwal’s residence, accusing him of working at the “behest of the BJP”. While some AAP MLAs claimed Mr Prakash had made casteist remarks, some party leaders also alleged that they were roughed up inside the Delhi secretariat.

Rejecting Mr Prakash’s charges, the party claimed he had used abusive language against some legislators and left the chief minister’s residence, where he had gone for a meeting Monday night, without answering any of the questions he was asked.

Prakash Jarwal and Ajay Dutt, AAP MLAs from Deoli and Ambed-kar Nagar respectively, claimed the bureaucrat made casteist remarks. They have lodged a complaint against him with the Delhi police and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, Mr Jarwal said. The AAP had said that the meeting at the CM’s residence was to discuss rations.

In a statement, it said about 2.5 lakh families last month were deprived of rations they were entitled to because of faulty implementation of Aadhaar and MLAs were under pressure from the people because of this.

There was a meeting of MLAs at the CM’s residence. The chief secreta-ry refused to answer que-stions saying that he was not answerable to MLAs and CM and that he was answerable only to L-G. He even used bad language and left without answering any questions, the statement said.

“If the chief secretary can make such wild allegations, one can imagine the kind of obstacles that are being created in the AAP government’s work by the BJP through officers,” the party said.

AAP leader Ashish Khetan alleged he was manhandled by a group of nearly 150 people in the Delhi Secretariat this afternoon. Delhi’s food and civil supplies minister Imran Hussain has also lodged a complaint with the police stating that he was assaulted in the secretariat.