New Delhi: Alleging that chief secretary Anshu Prakash, was threatening Vidhan Sabha officials and asking them to avoid the Question Hour during the upcoming session, several Assembly committee members termed the CS’ interference as “illegal.” The Delhi Vidhan Sabha committee chairpersons, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Rakhi Birla, Sanjeev Jha, Madan Lal, and Vishesh Ravi, said that the CS’ actions have forced them to take the extraordinary step of issuing a statement to bring his illegal attempts in the public domain.
“It has been brought to our notice that the chief secretary is threatening the Vidhan Sabha officials and asking them to avoid the Question Hour during the three-day Assembly session, which is scheduled to take place from June 6-8.
“Further, the chief secretary is pressurising the law department of the Delhi government to extract a wrongful opinion on the issue, in which neither the department nor the chief secretary have any locus to either seek or give an opinion,” they said in a statement.
They added it was shocking that the CS was acting as a political agent.
“It is shocking and beyond any reasonable understanding as to how a bureaucrat, who has been appointed as a chief secretary, is behaving as a political agent. He appears to be furthering the agenda of the BJP-nominated lieutenant-governor to undermine the Legislative Assembly,” they said. Article 239AA (6) of the Constitution of India states: “The council of ministers shall be collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly.”
The CS is expected to know that the collective will of the council of ministers, reflected by the Cabinet, conveys to the Assembly when the session is to be convened and what government business it intends to transact during the session.
“Beyond this, according to the Vidhan Sabha rules, how the House will be run is the sole prerogative of the Speaker. Neither the Cabinet nor the chief secretary, who is secretary to the Cabinet, has any say or locus in how the House proceedings will be conducted. So far as the Question Hour is concerned, it is the Speaker alone who decides whether it will be taken up during a particular session or not,” they said.
