Delhi HC issues notice to Bharti, Kejriwal over their election

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday issued notices to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Law Minister Somnath Bharti. The notices were issued after BJP leaders Vijender Gupta and Arti Mehra filed pleas seeking to declare their election void.Gupta and Mehra claimed in their pleas that the money the two leaders spent on their election campaign exceeded the limit set by the Election Commission.

The AAP government has been in power for one month and it has already been mired in several controversies.From rebel MLAs accusing Kejriwal of being autocratic to a botched up midnight raid conducted by Bharti – during which a few Ugandan women were allegedly harassed – AAP has weathered one storm after another.On Sunday, the rookie political party was forced to expel one of its leaders, Vinod Kumar Binny, an MLA from Laxmi Nagar. The party accused him of “tarnishing” its image.

Binny had claimed that the party was going back on its 2013 poll promises and accused Kejriwal of “doing nothing” on corruption allegations against ex-Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit. On Monday, he met the Lieutenant Governor over the Somnath Bharti case and said the L-G assured him of action.With Binny gone, the AAP government is left with 27 MLAs in the Delhi Assembly. It gets support from the eight MLAs of Congress, which has maintained that it will continue its uneasy alliance with AAP.

Only time will tell if the AAP government retains the confidence of the people of Delhi,” Congress’s Satyavrat Chaturvedi said.Pressure is mounting on the party to sack Somnath Bharti as well after his midnight raid.The BJP held a demonstration outside the Delhi Secretariat on Monday demanding removal of Bharti. “Kejriwal offered us tea. We are not here to have tea. We want him to act against Bharti,” a BJP leader said. “We want Kejriwal to remove Somnath Bharti,” BJP’s Harsh Vardhan added.

Public opinion, however, stays divided on the Law Minister’s controversial action. Local residents in Khirki Extension, where Bharti carried out the midnight raid, have backed him. They say that his action is unprecedented and that no one has acted on their complaints in the past. NGOs and women’s rights organisations, however, have demanded action against the minister