Jung the boss: Supreme Court refuses to stay HC order

The bench said it may consider referring the petitions to a larger bench after hearing arguments.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam, meanwhile, said the LG can not go ahead with the inquiry into various decisions taken by the Kejriwal government when the Supreme Court was hearing the seven petitions of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) democratically constituted body.

The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Centre on six appeals of the Delhi government, challenging the High Court verdict that held that the Lieutenant Governor (LG) is the administrative head of the national capital.

The Centre, however, was not in favour of entertaining the appeals.

However, the SC refused to stay the operation of August 4 verdict of the high court and said it would rather list the matter for final hearing on November 15.

At the outset of the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said the petition by Delhi government was not maintainable as it was flawed because it has been sworn by the Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

Delhi government’s lawyers, however, pointed out that the secretary concerned refused to sign the appeals/affidavits under the LG’s instruction, forcing the deputy CM to sign them. LG has no qualification to govern Delhi.

Raising further objection to the maintainability of the Delhi government’s petition, the AG said that it was a settled issue that Delhi was a Union Territory and not a State.

During the meeting, he talked about his government’s achievements in Delhi and claimed that he would bring back all those industrial units that had migrated to other states.

Rebel AAP MLA Devendra Sehrawat has shot off another letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, saying he will be held “responsible” if 21 party MLAs appointed as Parliamentary Secretaries lose their Assembly membership in the wake of a Delhi High Court order. The High Court in its order on August 8 had termed the appointments of 21 legislators as Parliamentary Secretaries by the AAP government illegal as it was not sanctioned by the Lt Governor of Delhi.

Subramaniam, echoing the views of Venugopal, said the LG had gone ahead with appointing a three-member panel to examine the decisions of the Delhi government which were taken without Jung’s prior permission.