AAP Govt Reviews LG Baijal's Performance in Office; Lists All Rejected, Delayed Projects

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi on Wednesday upped the ante against Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal when it released an 'Outcome Report' which is being seen as a 'performance review' of the LG's office.

The report, tabled on the floor of the Delhi Assembly by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday, runs into 89 pages and is divided into two sections.

The first part of the report summarises all the major policy proposals or matters that have either been rejected, or are pending for approval by the LG, or have been substantially delayed being approved.

Part 1 of the report also gives a detailed account of Baijal’s response to various files and policy proposals sent to his office by the AAP government, including how many days he took to approve a proposal, whether the delay was avoidable or unavoidable, whether he rejected the proposal altogether and whether approval from the LG is still pending.

It also includes a list of 35 policy proposals sent by 14 different departments of the Delhi Government in the previous financial year, for which approval was either pending, delayed or denied altogether.

The Aam Aadmi Party said in a tweet: For Establishing Delhi Healthcare Corporation Ltd. (DHCL) file was sent in Aug, 2016 but not yet approved. This is a GNCTD’s efforts to improve the functioning of the government-run hospitals. However, LG has practically rejected this proposal."

The report added, "In Part II of this report, details are given of the total sanctioned posts of all Departments of the Government of NCT of Delhi, along with the details on the positions that are filled and those that are vacant. Since the judgment of the Hon’ble High Court on 04.08.2016, it is the legal position that all issues of ‘Services’ are within the purview of the Hon’ble LG. Therefore, ensuring that all vacancies within GNCTD are filled is the responsibility of the Hon’ble LG. Vacancies have an impact on execution of various projects of any Department, as inadequacy of staff bottlenecks both the deliberation on and the implementation of policies. Therefore while appraising the performance of the office of the LG, an important indicator is the vacancies in every department."

The second part further lists 45,504 vacancies across 21 departments of Delhi Government, which fall under the purview of the Lieutenant Governor. The highest number of vacancies, 34,970, are in the education department which is headed by the Deputy CM.