Najeeb Jung cancels top bureaucrats’ visit to Vatican with CM Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung has rejected chief secretary K.K. Sharma and health minister Satyendra Jain’s OSD D.S. Goyal’s request to accompany chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for Mother Teressa’s canonisation ceremony on September 4 in Vatican City. The L-G has, however, granted permission to Mr Kejriwal, his OSD Vibhav Kumar and Mr Jain to attend the ceremony.

The L-G is said to have rejected the request of Mr Sharma and Mr Goyal on the ground that the two were not required to attend any official meeting in connection with the Delhi government. A senior bureaucrat said that earlier, all foreign tours undertaken by state government ministers and legislators had to be cleared by the ministry of external affairs. “These are political clearances that have to be taken from the Centre. Now, the L-G has the power to clear these files.”

A highly place source said that about a dozen AAP leaders will accompany Mr Kejriwal to Vatican City on their personal expenses. Among the leaders expected to accompany the CM are party spokesperson Raghav Chaddha, Delhi Dialogue vice-chairman Asish Khaitan and poet-turned politician Kumar Vishwas.

The Vatican trip is going to be Mr Kejriwal’s first foreign visit after he assumed charge of the Delhi government. He will also be joined by his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, who who had earlier agreed to be present at the ceremony.

Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, will be declared a Saint by Pope Francis. She was beatified in 2003, considered the first step to sainthood.

In March, Pope Francis announced that Mother Teresa would be canonised as a saint on September 4, on the eve of her 19th death anniversary. She died in 1997 at the age of 87.

Mr Kejriwal along with two others will be leaving Delhi on Friday and will be back on August 5. He had earlier accepted the invitation of the Missionaries of Charity, with which he had worked for two months in 1992 before joining the Indian Revenue Service.

Mr Kejriwal had ever jumped to Mother Teresa’s defence earlier this year when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said her service for the poor was aimed at converting them to Christanity. “I worked with Mother Teressa for a few months at Nirmal Hriday ashram in Kolkatta. She was a nobel soul. Please spare her,” he had tweeted then.

Mr Kejriwal’s move to accept the invitation to attend the ceremony is also being viewed as political. The AAP spin doctors believe that his attending the ceremony will also boost AAP’s electoral prospects in Goa, which has a significant Catholic population of nearly 30 per cent.

During his Goa tour, Mr Kejriwal had declared his party will win 35 of the 40 seats in Goa.