AAP drops plans to burn copies of Centre’s ordinance

New Delhi: Hours after declaring to burn copies of the Centre’s Delhi ordinance at its party office here, the AAP on Friday desisted from making such a move as it said the matter was sub judice.

Notably, the AAP-led Delhi government on Friday moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance on control of services, saying it is an “unconstitutional exercise of executive fiat” that attempts to “override” the top court and the basic structure of the Constitution.

Besides quashing of the ordinance, the government also sought an interim stay on it.

Earlier in the day, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will burn copies of the ordinance at the party office in central Delhi on July 3.

Addressing a press conference, party chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj said copies of the ordinance will be

burned across the 70 assembly constituencies of the national capital.

In a statement late evening, the party said, “AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal and the senior leadership of AAP will neither burn nor participate in the protests and agitations against the Delhi Ordinance on July 3 as proposed earlier since the matter is now sub judice in the Hon’ble Supreme Court. All the programmes are cancelled.”

Delhi minister Bharadwaj accused the Centre of trying to take “illegal” control of Delhi through the “black ordinance”.

The party had on June 11 organised a ‘maha rally’ against the ordinance.

The Centre on May 19 promulgated the ordinance to create an authority for the transfer and posting of IAS and DANICS officers in Delhi, with the AAP government calling the move a circumvention of the Supreme Court verdict on control of services.