AAP urges city officers not to obstruct work

New Delhi: Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday urged government officers, protesting against the alleged attack on chief secretary Anshu Prakash by party MLAs, to not obstruct work as doing so would hit the governance.

Saurabh Bharadwaj, chief spokesperson of AAP’s Delhi unit, said the cases relating to the alleged assault on Prakash and the attack on minister Imran Hussain and Delhi Dialogue Commission’s vice-chairman Ashish Khetan are being investigated by the police.

“We appeal to the officers not to obstruct work as governance gets hit because of this,” Mr Bharadwaj said.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Cabinet colleagues on Friday met lieutenant-governor Anil Baijal and sought his intervention to ease the government-bureaucracy tension.

A senior AAP leader said that the bureaucrats should not make its tussle with the Delhi government a matter of ego since their protest was hurting governance in Delhi.

Chief secretary Prakash has alleged he was beaten by AAP MLAs Prakash Jarwal and Amanatullah Khan during a late-night meeting at Mr Kejriwal’s residence on Monday. The officers since then have boycotted meetings called by Delhi government ministers.

Demanding action in the case of attack on Hussain and Khetan, AAP leader Ashutosh said that party MP Sanjay Singh had sought time with the Delhi Police commissioner on Friday to raise the issue, but Mr Singh has not heard from him yet.

Meanwhile, a joint forum of employees and officers of the Delhi government on Saturday met Cabinet Secretary P.K. Sinha to raise the issue of alleged assault on chief secretary Anshu Prakash and apprised him about the “difficult working condition” prevailing in the Aam Aadmi Party dispensation. In the meeting, the episode over the past few years and the immediate one with Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash were detailed, the forum said in a statement. The officers reiterated that that they will continue to work through formal written channels of communication, and observe a peaceful silent protest of five minutes at lunchtime till the political executive takes tangible action.