The Hindu : New Delhi News : Finally, MLAs get full access to Secretariat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 13, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Finally, MLAs get full access to Secretariat

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI, DEC. 12. After years of pleading, the legislators of the Delhi Assembly have finally been granted full access to the Delhi Secretariat housed in Players Building. The elected representatives were earlier not allowed to take their vehicles up to the main portico of the building and had to disembark on the road and walk through various corridors and metal detectors to reach their destination.

However, all this `humiliation' will now come to an end as the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, is understood to have agreed to open the gates of Players Buildings for the vehicles of MLAs. Not only this, it has also been decided to set up a waiting room for MLAs within the building that will be equipped with necessary facilities. Ms. Dikshit gave an assurance to this effect to the Nationalist Congress Party MLA, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, and her party legislator, Mateen Ahmed, during a meeting this past Thursday. Ever since the Delhi Government shifted to the new building nearly four years ago, MLAs were debarred from driving into the building and had to alight on the road and then walk their way through gates provided for the public.

On the other hand, the Government had ensured that this routine was not followed by bureaucrats and a list of nearly 28 senior IAS officers was approved for access to Players Building in their vehicles. It is another matter that all protocol norms were violated in the process and the elected representatives were left pleading for direct entry to the Secretariat. Interestingly, Delhi Secretariat is probably the only building where elected representatives cannot drive up to the main gate and even high security buildings in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab do not follow such norms.

The issue had been raised a number of times in the Delhi Assembly and on one or two occasions the Delhi Assembly Speaker had also asked the Chief Minister to look into the issue and ensure that the position of MLAs was not compromised. However, the Sheila Dikshit regime refused to budge from its stand and in the absence of any such demand from the "Congress legislators" the matter was left pending. Although the Congress MLAs in private confessed to being humiliated by the adoption of this procedure, but the fear of being reprimanded by the Chief Minister had ensured that nobody raised the issue. The matter had come up again during the past one year when some MLAs pointed out that even junior officers were driving up to the portico but they were not being allowed to bring their vehicles in. For its part, the Government maintained that it was important to prevent the entry of "MLA vehicles" to the building in view of the increased security threat perception. It was feared that once the MLAs were allowed to bring in their vehicles, it would open the floodgates and their supporters would also start pouring in, endangering the security of the building.

However, Mr. Bidhuri informed that he had raised the matter with the Chief Minister and apprised her about the problems being faced by the MLAs in walking from the road to the building. Every time an MLA visited Players Building, he was asked to produce his identity card at various levels and then he had to walk through various corridors to reach his destination.

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