New Delhi: The newly formed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has decided to withdraw all the petitions filed by the former Aam Aadmi Party government against the Delhi Lieutenant Governor and the central government, ThePrint has learnt.
It is further learnt that the process has already begun, with a lawyer in the Supreme Court, who was engaged as a special counsel by the Delhi government, being asked to give no-objection certificates (NOCs) for withdrawing one of these cases.
“We have decided to withdraw all the cases that were filed amidst political negativity against the L-G and the Centre,” a highly placed source in the newly formed government told ThePrint. “We will expedite the withdrawal process. We won’t wait for the dates and for these matters to come up before the courts first, because our time and resources are being wasted on such cases.”
The move was triggered by the BJP returning to power in Delhi last month after 27 years.
The erstwhile AAP government has at least half a dozen litigations with the Centre and the L-G pending in the Supreme Court. These include petitions challenging the law that effectively gave the L-G power over the Delhi bureaucracy, two separate National Green Tribunal (NGT) orders appointing the L-G as the chairperson of panels to tackle Yamuna pollution and oversee the disposal of municipal solid waste, and a plea relating to the appointment of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) chairperson.
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The pending cases
The legal tussle between the Delhi government and the Centre began early into the AAP’s first term in the national capital. As early as 2015, the Delhi High Court was examining questions over the administrative powers of the L-G in light of the special status of Delhi as a Union Territory under the Constitution.
Currently, the most important amongst the pending legal challenges is the petition challenging the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Act, 2023, which created a new statutory authority to handle the transfer and posting of bureaucrats in the national capital.
Another pertains to the tiff between the AAP government and the L-G over the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) chairperson’s appointment. The post was especially contentious because the AAP alleged that through its control, the BJP wanted to end Delhi’s power subsidy scheme, one of its flagship projects.
Another petition pending in the Supreme Court challenges the Centre’s decision to vest in the L-G the power to appoint government lawyers. A petition filed in March 2023 challenging the L-G’s decision to allow sending school teachers to Finland for training but with riders, is also pending.
The erstwhile Arvind Kejriwal-led government also filed two appeals challenging orders of the NGT in the Supreme Court. One of these NGT orders appointed a high-level committee headed by the L-G to oversee the cleaning of the Yamuna. The second NGT order appointed the L-G as the head of the Solid Waste Monitoring Committee for handling solid waste management in Delhi.
Both of these appeals challenging the NGT orders are pending in the apex court.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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