New Delhi: Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party and CMO on Wednesday alleged that Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena was planning to allocate Chief Minister Atishi’s residence to a senior BJP leader, which the L-G office rejected, The Tribune reported.
The allegations come just as footage showed cartons being moved out of the house in Flagstaff Road in north Delhi’s Civil Lines where former CM Arvind Kejriwal lived for over nine years.
The Chief Minister’s Office reportedly alleged that for the first time in nation’s history a sitting Chief Minister has been forced to vacate official residence.
The CMO added that ‘after 27 years of being out of power in Delhi, the BJP is now attempting to seize the CM’s residence.’
Rejecting the accusations, the L-G House reportedly termed the bungalow not the official CM residence, adding that the property, like all other official residences of chief ministers, belongs to the Public Works Department (PWD).
It is reported citing sources that ‘As per protocol, PWD takes possession of any vacant residence, inventories its contents, and then reassigns it following proper procedure.’
The BJP previously claimed that Atishi failed to hand over keys of her residence to PWD for reallocation as per procedure.
A PWD letter dated October 6, which Delhi LoP Vijender Gupta shared, stated that Kejriwal had not vacated 6 Flagstaff Road residence with his belongings still remaining there.
The CM residence has long been at the centre of controversies over entailing huge expenses on renovations with the BJP terming it a ‘Sheesh Mahal’.