More than six months after the alleged assault on Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash at the home of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by AAP MLAs triggered a stand-off, the Delhi government appears to be set on a collision course again with the Centre and bureaucrats.
On Monday, news agencies reported that the Delhi home department had requested Home Minister Satyendar Jain for permission to appoint three special public prosecutors to handle the Anshu Prakash assault case; however, Jain declined the request. Jain reportedly insisted that regular government prosecutors would handle the case.
The home department had moved the request after receiving a letter from the Delhi Police, which reports to the Central government, seeking the appointment of advocates Mohit Mathur, V. Madhukar and Siddharth Aggarwal as special public prosecutors.
Leader of opposition, Vijender Gupta of the BJP, slammed the Kejriwal government over the issue, alleging it was “making deliberate, planned and sustained efforts to influence and derail the judicial process in the high-profile case against the chief minister, deputy chief minister and 11 MLAs”.
Kejriwal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and 11 AAP MLAs have been named as accused in the Delhi Police charge-sheet on the Anshu Prakash assault case. The MLAs are Amanatullah Khan, Prakash Jarwal, Nitin Tyagi, Rituraj Govind, Sanjeev Jha, Ajay Dutt, Rajesh Rishi, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal, Parveen Kumar and Dinesh Mohania.
(With PTI inputs)