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New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Aam Aadmi Party leaders Satyendra Kumar Jain and Gopal Rai during a sit-in protest at Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijals residence, in New Delhi on Tuesday, June 12, 2018. (PTI Photo)[/caption]
New Delhi, June 12 (IANS): Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a video message released on Tuesday told Delhiites that he is protesting for them as he and three of his Ministers prepared to continue their sit-in in the Raj Niwas drawing room for another night.
“The protest is for you all, for the people of Delhi, so that you can get roads, schools, hospitals, Mohalla Clinics, water and electricity,” Kejriwal said in the video that was put out in the social media and also circulated on various WhatsApp groups.
Kejriwal claimed the IAS officers were “only working on important files” and “not responding to Ministers’ calls and messages, and not attending our meetings”.
Kejriwal, along with his three senior Ministers -- Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain and Gopal Rai -- has been camping in the Raj Niwas, the official accommodation-cum-office of Lt. Governor Anil Baijal, since Monday evening.
The demands include a direction to IAS officers working in the Delhi administration to end their “strike”, action against officers who have struck work for “four months” and approval to his government’s proposal for doorstep delivery of ration to the poor. The AAP leaders also exhorted the common people of Delhi through a video message to join the protest march.
The police have already beefed up security outside Raj Niwas, with paramilitary and police personnel deployed in a 2-kilometre radius of the LG’s office.
He also said that there had been no communication from the Lt. Governor’s office till Tuesday evening and hence Kejriwal and others would stay put there. According to party sources, no food was served to the Ministers from the Lt. Governor’s office, though party supporters and the Chief Minister’s residence was supplying them food.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday hit back at Kejriwal and termed the protest as “a planned trick to divert people’s attention from the real issues of poor health system in government hospitals and acute water shortage in the city”.
He said that the Delhi BJP MPs and MLAs would go and protest outside the Chief Minister’s residence over water and electricity crises in Delhi.
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju dubbed Kejriwal’s protest as “drama” and wondered how long this would go on.
The Congress, too, called the AAP protest a ploy to cover up its failures.