BJP members changed public stand in NDMC meet: CM

The BJP-majority in the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) had refused to share the recording of a council meeting in February with him as they had switched from their publicly stated stance on proposals and were afraid of being “exposed”, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday.

The NDMC had decided during a special meeting on Monday not to share the recording of a February 3 council meeting with Mr. Kejriwal, who had presided over that meeting and refused to sign the minutes till the recording was given.

The five BJP members of the council — vice-chairperson Karan Singh Tanwar, New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi and nominated members B.S. Bhati, Abdul Rasheed Ansari and Anita Arya — had decided against Mr. Kejriwal’s demand.

Note of dissent

On Wednesday, Mr. Kejriwal and the other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) council member, Delhi Cantonment MLA Surender Singh, sent a note of dissent against Monday’s decision. NDMC chairperson Naresh Kumar wrote that as decided during Monday’s meeting the dissent note would be included in the minutes of the meeting.

In the dissent note, Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Singh wrote that the February 3 meeting had been called to discuss three proposals — the grant of higher pay scales to all employees, giving employment to family members of deceased employees on compassionate grounds and regularising temporary staff.

“Whereas the two signatories to this statement were strongly supportive of all the above 3 issues, some members of BJP, especially Mrs Meenakshi Lekhi & Sh. Ansari, had strong views against all the above 3 issues. Some members had mixed views. Therefore, it was proposed that the views of each member on each of these issues should be formally recorded, to which everyone agreed. [sic],” the note read.

It added that when the minutes of the meeting were presented to the Chief Minister to sign, “he felt the views of the members had not been correctly recorded”. In a note on March 23, he asked for the video recording of the meeting.

Cite RTI, judgments

Citing the Right to Information and several Supreme Court judgments, Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Singh expressed their dissent against the decision not to release or share the recording of the meeting.

“In the instant case, whereas some BJP members had been publicly taking a stand in favour of the 3 issues...however, they said exactly the opposite inside the Council meeting...That is the reason why BJP members are so adamant that the recordings of this meeting should not be made public, else their duplicity would get exposed,” the note read.

Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Singh demanded that all recordings and transcripts be made public with a nominal fee and shared with members free of cost.