Dispute of Number Two in Delhi govt

Amitabh Shukla

New Delhi, April 17

After the debacle in the MCD elections, the fissures and friction within the Delhi government became apparent in the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday in the absence of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. When Dikshit left for Kuwait to bid for the 2014 Asian Games, she authorised Health Minister Yoganand Shastri to answer questions on her behalf, stirring a fresh controversy.

According to convention, the Finance Minister, who sits next to Dikshit in the Assembly, is the number two in the government. In this case, Finance Minister A.K. Walia is the undisputed number two in the state government after Dikshit. In several official functions, he represented Delhi in the absence of Dikshit. Moreover, when the CM goes abroad, Walia is assigned the responsibility of taking decisions.

In her last tenure, it was the then Finance Minister M.S. Sathi who was the number two in the government and officiated in the absence of Dikshit. “This is a peculiar situation when the convention has been broken,” said a Congress MLA on condition of anonymity.

To add to the friction within the government and to cut Walia to “size”, Chief Whip of the Congress Legislature Party Ramakant Goswami wants the seat of Walia to be changed. At present, he sits next to Dikshit in the House and Goswami has written to the Assembly Secretary to put in place a system wherein Dikshit is allotted the entire bench to herself and Walia is shifted somewhere else.

When contacted Goswami admitted: “I had written to the Assembly Secretary on the sitting issue. We want that the senior legislators occupy the front benches,” he said. Goswami told HT that he had written the letter sometime ago so that Dikshit gets an entire Bench to herself.

Asked whether his number two position in the government is under threat, Walia refused to comment. “I was busy with the Budget and had to give several interviews. Due to my busy schedule, the responsibility might have been given to the other minister,” he said. The minister did not elaborate further.

When Shastri was replying to the questions posed to Dikshit, some MLAs referred to his as the “Acting Chief Minister”. Shastri, interrupted saying he was not the “Acting CM”. “I am simply answering the questions which has been posed to the CM,” he added. (2007)