New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday reserved its order on a plea by opposition MLAs seeking a sitting of the Delhi Assembly for tabling of several CAG reports on the city government.
Justice Sachin Datta reserved the verdict after hearing senior lawyers appearing for the petitioners, the Speaker as well as the Delhi government.
“Arguments heard. Judgement reserved,” the judge said.
Opposition leader Vijender Gupta and BJP MLAs -- Mohan Singh Bisht, Om Prakash Sharma, Ajay Kumar Mahawar, Abhay Verma, Anil Kumar Bajpai and Jitendra Mahajan -- filed the petition last year and sought a direction to the Speaker to call a sitting of the assembly for the purpose of immediate tabling of 14 CAG reports. The petitioners filed the plea through lawyers Neeraj and Satya Ranjan Swain.
The CAG, in its reports, was critical of some of the AAP-led Delhi government’s policies, including its now-scrapped excise policy for reportedly causing losses to the exchequer.
The senior lawyers for the Speaker as well as the government on Thursday opposed the passing of such a direction by the court and said there was no urgency to table the reports at a stage when the assembly elections were to be held soon.
The Speaker’s counsel questioned whether any “fruitful purpose” would be served if a sitting of the House was called “hardly 20 days” before its mandate ended. He emphasised that the CAG reports were considered by the assembly in a manner which was set out and included referring them to the public accounts committee (PAC), and there was no bar on the reports being considered by the next assembly post polls.
The senior lawyer appearing for the Delhi government said there was no urgency in the matter and the hurry was only political in nature.
The petitioners’ senior counsel, on the other hand, accused the government of delaying the matter and said the upcoming elections made the placing of the audit reports in the assembly even more pertinent. “They can’t delay this matter to the last day. They are now taking advantage of their own wrong. They have violated the constitutional obligations of promptness,” he said, while adding that permitting the government to “get away” with the non-tabling of the reports would be a “fraud” on the Constitution.
In a reply filed in the matter, the assembly secretariat has maintained that no useful purpose would be served in laying CAG reports before the assembly when its tenure was ending in February and no judicial order could be passed to the Speaker in matters of internal functioning of the legislative assembly.
It asserted that being the guardian of the House under the Constitution, the Speaker’s discretion to summon a sitting of the legislative assembly was part of its internal functioning, which was outside the purview of any judicial review.
The petition claimed the Delhi government failed to table crucial CAG reports from 2017-2022 in the Assembly, breaching its statutory duty. The Lieutenant Governor highlighted the delay, asserting that Delhi’s people had a constitutional right to access the reports. The Delhi High Court noted concerns over the government’s delay, casting doubt on its sincerity in
addressing the issue.