AAP slams Centre for denying nod to CM
NEWDELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday launched a broadside against the Centre over what it called the denial of permission to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to visit Denmark for a climate summit.
“This is unfortunate and beyond my understanding that why Modi ji’s government is working with such hostility towards us,” AAP leader Sanjay Singh said after the chief minister failed to get approval from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) for C40 Climate Summit visit in Denmark, reports news agency ANI.
“He wasn’t going on vacation but to hold discussions with mayors of 100 cities of Asia and present a better picture of our country on efforts to abate pollution. How many official visits of CMS have been cancelled till date? We applied a month ago but couldn’t get clearance,” he added. There is, however, no official confirmation of permission for travel being denied to Kejriwal.
According to Delhi government sources, the chief minister was scheduled to leave for the summit at 2 pm on Tuesday. “The Chief Minister’s Office has not yet received approval from the MEA for the CM’S visit,” a source said, reports PTI. The summit is to be held from October 9 to October 12.
In response to media query on this issue last week, the MEA had said a decision on the issue is taken based on multiple inputs. “We get hundreds of requests for political clearances every month from ministries, secretaries, bureaucrats. A decision is based on multiple i nputs,” MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had said.
An official said that whereas Delhi was waiting for permission, the Centre has “granted clearance to West Bengal urban development minister Firhad Hakim”. C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change.