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Journalism of Courage
On August 4, 2016, within hours of the Delhi High Court upholding the L-G as Delhi’s administrative head, the then L-G Najeeb Jung sat beaming in a press conference — his first since the Aam Aadmi Party had come to power. The contrast could not have been starker in 2018. Anil Baijal, the incumbent holder of the post, has maintained a
studious silence so far on Wednesday’s Supreme Court judgment that has virtually overturned the 2016 HC order.
Punctuating his statement with poetry, Jung had said he was diligently fulfilling his mandate of “preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution”.
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On the other hand, the elected government had found itself on the back foot. With Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attending a vipassana course in Dharamsala, his deputy Manish Sisodia was fielded to state the elected government’s position. Announcing the decision to move the Supreme Court, Sisodia had said: “The battle is not between the L-G and the Chief Minister. This is a battle of ‘we the people’. It is a battle between the selected and the elected.”
With the SC judgment coming as a shot in the arm this time, the Delhi government has flooded the media with tweets, statements and press conferences. “The SC’s judgment is only a vindication of the faith which the Constitution has reposed in the judiciary… the government of NCT acknowledges and accepts with humility and gratitude the verdict,” the government said Wednesday.
Even the opposition BJP and Congress had varying reactions. In 2016, the BJP had gunned for the CM’s resignation “if he cannot accept the verdict”. The Congress had stated that it was for Kejriwal to accept that Delhi was a centrally ruled Union Territory.
This time, the BJP has been muted in its reaction, stating that the SC has merely reiterated Constitutional provisions. The Congress, on the other hand, said the AAP has no excuses to “not work anymore”.
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