4 CMS back Kejriwal as Delhi row goes national
NEW DELHI: The six-day sit-in by Arvind Kejriwal and members of his Cabinet at the lieutenant-governor’s office magnified into a larger political battle on Saturday, with chief ministers of four non-bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp)-ruled states descending on the national Capital in a show of support to the chief minister.
Mamata Banerjee, HD Kumaraswamy, Pinarayi Vijayan and N Chandrababu Naidu, chief ministers of West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, respectively, paid a visit to Kejriwal’s house after being denied permission by L-G Anil Baijal to call on the Delhi CM who has been holed up in the visitors’ room of the L-G’S office with deputy Manish Sisodia, PWD minister Satyendar Jain and labour minister Gopal Rai.
The chief ministers are in town to attend a Niti Aayog meeting to be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.
“Tomorrow, in the meeting of Niti Ayog, all four of us will speak to the PM and seek his intervention in resolving the ongoing crisis in the national Capital. For four months work in Delhi has come to a halt. This is not the time to blame anyone, but the L-G and the Centre need to act now. What happens in the national capital will set a bad example for other states too,” Mamata Banerjee said at a press conference addressed by all four chief ministers. She described the impasse in Delhi — with the bureaucrats on one side and the government on the other — as a “constitutional crisis”.
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