Delhi LG Najeeb Jung appoints 3-member panel to examine 400 files submitted to him by Kejriwal Govt

Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has constituted a three-member committee to examine the decisions taken by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The panel comprises of Former Comptroller and Auditor General V K Shunglu, Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami and Former Chief Vigilance Commissioner Pradeep Kumar.

The committee has been set up to examine the irregularities and infirmities in the files which were submitted to Delhi LG following August 4, 2016 judgement of the High Court.

The High Court had held to be illegal several orders that were issued by the Delhi government without the approval of the Lt Governor.

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The members of the independent committee are eminent persons who have been in public life for several decades and have held high positions in government with supreme integrity and absolute probity.

After the High Court’s judgement on August 8 and 23, the Principal Secretaries/HODs of GNCTD were directed to review instances where as per rules prior approval of the Lt Governor was required but was not obtained. It had also directed them to place all such matters before him.

In response, the GNCTD has submitted around 400 files for Ex-Post Facto Approval of the Lt Governor and some more files are awaited.

The preliminary scrutiny of these files has revealed that several decisions taken over the last one and half years are in violation of Acts/Rules with attendant legal and financial implications. In order to examine them in depth, the committee has been constituted.

The Committee shall broadly:

a) Determine whether the decisions taken in these files and the processes adopted were in violation of the Acts/Rules and the constitutional scheme for Governance of GNCT of Delhi.

b) Determine whether such violations were wrong, illegal and deliberate acts of omissions/commissions.

c) Examine the role played by the Public Functionaries/Officers of the GNCT of Delhi and of any other individual related with these violations and fix responsibility.

d) Recommend appropriate administrative/criminal/civil action as well as action for recovery of financial loss to Government exchequer, if any, by such wrong decisions against the public functionaries/officers/individuals concerned. 

e) Recommend course of action to be taken on each of the files/proposals including whether the decisions can or cannot be regularized by the Lt. Governor.

f) Outline the administrative, legal and financial repercussions of the regularization/non-regularization of the decisions as in (e) above.

g) Make any other recommendation relevant in the above context including further inquiry in specific cases.

The Committee has been requested to submit its interim reports and recommendations to the Lt. Governor from time to time and to submit the final report within six weeks of the first meeting.