NDMC not sharing details of meeting on flimsy grounds, says Kejriwal

NEWDELHI: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has alleged that the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) is refusing to share a video recording of a council meeting held in February this year, prompting the civic body to call for an emergency meeting to discuss the issue next week .

In a note to the civic body, Kejriwal said that the NDMC chairperson and secretary were denying him access to the video recording of a council meeting dated February 3 on “flimsy” and “irrelevant” grounds.

The issue emerged after Kejriwal, who is the presiding officer of the council, found that the minutes of the meeting did not accurately record what he had said. “A perusal of the minutes created doubts whether they had been accurately recorded. Therefore, I demanded a copy of the video recording of that meeting. Now, the refusal of the secretary and chairman seem to strengthen my doubts whether the minutes are accurately recorded,” the chief minister wrote in his note dated April 5.

NDMC chairperson Naresh Kumar denied the allegations. Five of the 11-member council of the NDMC, including BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi, have proposed to hold a special meeting next week to devise a “mechanism” to be followed for sharing of the council meetings.

The February 3 meeting, sources said, had four agenda points of which there was disagreement on three. A media advisor to Kejriwal said that the CM during the meeting had asked that the views of all members be noted i n writing. “Recordings of the meetings are available to the members for free and to the general public on payment of certain charges. These are not secret meetings but open to visitors, media and often televised live,” he said.