The Hindu : Statehood issue all set to become main poll plank

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 30, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Statehood issue all set to become main poll plank

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JAN. 29. With general elections just a few months away, the issue of granting full Statehood to Delhi is all set to become the main poll plank of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Capital. While the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) today decided to hold a silent protest march from the Delhi Secretariat to the Parliament House complex on February 3, the BJP has decided to go to the people alleging that the Congress was non-serious on the issue Statehood.

The Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, said the CLP meeting had resolved to take out a silent protest march from Delhi Secretariat to Parliament House in which all Congress MLAs and Ministers would participate. "We will demand and pressurise the Union Government to get the Delhi Statehood Bill passed in the current session of Parliament."

"By not bringing the Bill in the current session when all formalities regarding the issue have already been completed only indicates that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the Centre is not at all willing to grant full Statehood to Delhi despite the fact that it was one of the main promises made in its manifesto for the State Assembly polls," she alleged.

According to Mr. Dikshit, the CLP expressed its indignation over the fact that Parliament had failed to pass the Bill that had been hanging fire for long. "The Bill was tabled in August 2003 in Parliament from where it was referred to the Standing Committee. The Committee has already submitted its report so there is no justification for any further delay in passing of the Bill," she added.

Informing that the Congress workers would also hold a dharna at Raj Ghat on January 30 on the Statehood issue, Ms. Dikshit said when she met the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, after assuming Chief Minister's office in December, she apprised him of the functional difficulties her Government had been facing. "Only granting Statehood to the Capital can do away with multiplicity of authorities, a long-standing demand of people of Delhi for better governance and overall development. The Centre should act fast before the Bill lapses and we have to go through the entire process again," she asserted.

Ms. Dikshit alleged that the intentions of NDA Government were not clear who does not want to grant full Statehood to Delhi and just want to use it as an election issue. "The BJP is fooling the people of Delhi. When the time has come to act, they are now backing out. If the Central Government fails to act now we will raise the issue in a big way in the forthcoming general elections," she said, adding that the CLP also welcomed the decision of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi to join active politics.

Countering Ms. Dikshit's allegations, the Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Jagdish Mukhi, alleged that the Congress had never taken a serious approach about the Statehood issue. It was the BJP Government in Delhi that first passed the resolution regarding the full Statehood in the State Assembly but the Congress that ruled at the Centre then had ignored it completely.

Stating that it would be difficult for the Centre to table the Bill in the current session that had been called specifically for a vote-on-account, Prof. Mukhi said: "Even the Congress knows that because of time constraint, the Statehood Bill cannot be brought in the current session. The Congress is just trying to take political mileage from the issue. We will go to the people exposing the Congress in the entire episode."

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