The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to direct the calling of a special session of the Delhi Legislative Assembly to discuss the reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in the lead-up to the upcoming Assembly elections. “Tabling CAG report mandatory under Constitution, court not inclined to accept BJP MLAs prayer on summoning assembly sitting,” the court said.
However, a bench of Justice Sachin Datta noted the inordinate delay on the part of the Delhi government in tabling the reports. BJP MLAs had in a petition asked to make 14 CAG reports of Delhi Government public.
The High Court said that presenting the report before the Assembly is a mandatory constitutional obligation.
What did the BJP MLAs say in their demand?
Opposition leader Vijender Gupta and seven BJP MLAs including Mohan Singh Bisht, Om Prakash Sharma, Ajay Kumar Mahawar, Abhay Verma, Anil Kumar Bajpai and Jitendra Mahajan had filed the petition last year and sought a direction to the speaker to call a sitting of the assembly for tabling the 14 CAG reportselated to the administration of Delhi.
The BJP MLAs had demanded that the High Court direct the Speaker to call a special session of the Assembly so that these could be debated.
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 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.
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.
(With PTI inputs)