‘BJP biggest threat to women in country’, say Atishi, Bharadwaj

New Delhi: Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj on Thursday attacked Lt Governor V K Saxena and the BJP over the sacking of “illegally” appointed contractual employees of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), alleging that the saffron party is the “biggest threat” to women in the country.

The Women and Child Development (WCD) Department of the Delhi government terminated the services of 52 “illegally” appointed contractual staff of DCW, officials said on Thursday. The termination has been carried out on the basis of a report submitted by a committee way back in June, 2017.

The WCD Department sent a proposal on the basis of the recommendations of the committee to Saxena, who approved it, following which the department issued the termination order, the officials said.

In a post in Hindi on X, Atishi said, “The staff of the Delhi Commission for Women, who helped thousands of rape victims, acid attack survivors, domestic abuse victims, and provided justice to lakhs of women through its helpline, has been ordered to be removed from the commission by the L-G.” “The BJP-led Central government gives tickets to rapists by garlanding them, and ruins the commission that fights for the rights of victimised, helpless women. The whole country should know: The biggest threat to women in this country is BJP,” she said. Her cabinet colleague Bharadwaj accused the L-G of stopping all the good work of the Delhi government.

“L-G sahab has rendered thousands of people unemployed in Delhi in the last one-and-a-half years. His aim is to stop all the good work of the Delhi government. Empowering these oppressed girls is true patriotism, humanity, the ultimate religion.

“In July last year, nearly 400 fellows, advisors, consultants, specialists and research fellows were removed. These young people had come after studying in big universities, and were making big contributions in government work. In this way a conspiracy was hatched to stop the work of the elected government, MLAs and ministers,” Bharadwaj alleged in a series of posts on X.

Responding to the allegations, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said “the unconstitutional working” of the entire Aam Aadmi Party government and especially the DCW’s former chairperson Swati Maliwal is responsible for the development.

Delhi minister Bharadwaj also said for the safety of women in Delhi buses, the Kejriwal government had appointed around 8,000 bus marshals.

“L-G sahab’s favourite officers even got the marshals fired from their jobs. Thousands of poor families in Delhi were able to run their households, now they are dying of hunger. And the women of Delhi are at the mercy of God,” he said.

Hitting back, Sachdeva said Maliwal should explain why she never tried to get new posts sanctioned.

“It is unfortunate that Swati Maliwal treated DCW as her personal fiefdom and kept volunteers of her NGOs mostly from other states on contractual jobs in DCW without following administrative procedure like Arvind Kejriwal did while employing volunteers in Delhi government,” he alleged.

Meanwhile, Social Welfare Minister of Delhi government Raaj Kumar Anand, whose resignation from the post is yet to be accepted, met L-G Saxena and handed over a memorandum alleging irregularities in social welfare, labour and SC/ST departments that came under him earlier.