“The Centre wants to run Delhi. They want to bulldoze our agenda, we will not allow this,” Mr Sisodia told NDTV.
“We are not afraid of controversies. We fight and will fight with anyone and everyone who tries to block our agenda,” he said adding, “Don’t care what the media thinks of us.”
Mr Kejriwal and the Lieutenant Governor, whose working relationship has never been smooth, plummeted into their latest battle over an IAS officer described by the Chief Minister as a “lobbyist for power companies”. She was picked by Mr Jung as Acting Chief Secretary or the senior-most bureaucrat in the Delhi government.
Mr Kejriwal has claimed that an elected government cannot be saddled with bureaucrats against its choice, a stand that has been backed by other heads of state governments.
But the Union Home Ministry issued a notification on Thursday in which it said that it is not essential for the Lieutenant Governor to consult the chief minister on matters like the appointment of key bureaucrats.
Mr Kejriwal had retaliated by accusing the Centre of “betraying the people of Delhi” and attempting to protect corrupt officers. Reiterating his allegation of the BJP using the Lieutenant Governor to govern Delhi by proxy, he said, “The Prime Minister’s Office acts like the Queen of England used to, with the Lieutenant Governor as Viceroy.” The BJP, he said, is trying to “run Delhi with three MLAs”; his Aam Aadmi Party has the remaining 67 seats in the state legislature.
The AAP government has now called for a two-day emergency session of the Delhi assembly from Tuesday to discuss the Home Ministry’s notification.
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