With the Election Commission recommending disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators in Delhi for holding offices of profit as parliamentary secretaries, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Friday asked AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, to stop playing a blame game over the issue.
In a statement, SAD spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said Kejriwal should accept the fact that he had committed a gross irregularity by appointing legislators to office-of-profit posts without amending the concerned State Act and be ready to face the people.
He said it had been conclusively proven that the Delhi CM had gone against the law by appointing 21 legislators to office of profit posts. “The EC has justly held this move to be unconstitutional. Instead of accepting this verdict gracefully, AAP is claiming that its chief parliamentary secretaries were not enjoying any facilities when the state chief secretary has submitted a report to the contrary. No elected government should lie in this manner and when caught should not try to defame institutions like the Election Commission. This kind of behaviour is reprehensible,” the Akali leader said.
Cheema said AAP was resorting to such cheap tactics because it was afraid of facing the people. “If AAP has not done anything wrong, it should not run away from the peoples’ court”. He said AAP was taking desperate measures like trying to approach the high court to avoid going in for an election on 20 seats.
Cheema said the mood of the Delhi electorate was reflected in the municipal elections and the position of AAP had gone from bad to worse since then. “Now it might not even be able to save its security deposit on all these 20 seats”, the SAD spokesman added.