Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel on Thursday accused the Centre of snatching away the powers of the Delhi Assembly through amending the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) Bill, 2021, saying that it is nothing but the murder of democracy.

Goel, who is a senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Shahdara, said the amendment of GNCTD (Amendment) Bill-2021 was “a clear murder of democracy by the Centre.”

Goel said the day GNCTD Bill was passed, he had decided to resign from Speaker’s post. “It was painful for me. I could not sleep since the Delhi Assembly’s rights were snatched by the Centre. The opposition (BJP) here is talking about their rights in the Assembly.

In reality, the opposition has lost this right. I was expecting, BJP MLAs would come to me and say something. They are members of the Delhi assembly and they must have acted against GNCTD Bill, but they did nothing. It pained me. Today, I am saying with full responsibility and with full of emotion that Delhi’s power was snatched,” Goel made this statement during the first day of the monsoon session of the Delhi Assembly.

GNCTD Act (Amendment) Bill was passed by the Parliament in March this year.

The (Amendment) GNCTD Bill 2021, says the ‘government’ referred in any law passed by the legislative assembly, would mean Lieutenant Governor.

After the Bill was passed from both the Houses of Parliament, it stated that the Delhi Government must obtain the opinion of Delhi L-G before implementing any policy decision.

The Delhi assembly is meeting for the first time after the Bill was passed by the Parliament.

Goel said, “I would not allow the opposition more than 20 minutes for discussion. It’s up to you where you use these 20 minutes for debate or disrupt the session. But, I won’t allow you (BJP) more than 20 minutes.”

The monsoon session of the Delhi assembly began with disruption by BJP MLAs who prompted Speaker to direct to marshal out BJP MLA Anil Bajpai.

Disruption continued during ‘Question Hour’ and the Speaker suspended one more BJP leader O.P. Sharma and ordered to marshal out the former leader of the opposition and BJP MLA Vijender Gupta.