Delhi CM’s husband attend govt meetings: AAP slams ‘Phulera Panchayat’
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New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday criticized Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta after photographs showed her husband participating in official government meetings, which the party called an ‘example of nepotism’.
AAP’s Delhi in-charge Saurabh Bharadwaj shared photos—sourced from Rekha Gupta’s Instagram handle—showing her husband, Manish Gupta, who is a Delhi-based businessman, sitting next her at an official review meeting with bureaucrats, The Indian Express reported.
It is reported that the same images have also been shared on Gupta’s twitter account.
Bharadwaj drew a parallel between Manish Gupta’s participation in official meeting and the husband of woman sarpanch of fictional ‘Phulera’ village exercising authority in the web series Panchayat.
‘Just like the husband of the female head used to work as the head in Phulera Panchayat, today in Delhi the husband of the CM is sitting in official meetings… This is completely unconstitutional. Democracy and the constitutional system are being made fun of in the country’s capital,’ he said.
Pointing to BJP’s criticism of dynastic politics in Congress, Bharadwaj asked ‘If this is not nepotism then what is it? Does the CM of the world’s largest party not have any worker left on whom she can trust? Why is her husband being made part of the government administrative system in this way?’
The photos came from a review meeting attended by CM Gupta on Saturday at Jan Seva Sadan in Shalimar Bagh constituency.
Later in a social media post, Rekha Gupta wrote that officials participating in the review meeting on ongoing development works in the Shalimar Bagh Assembly constituency were directed to ‘regularly assess the progress of ongoing works and submit detailed status reports within the stipulated time frame’.
Expanding on the discussions at the meeting on pending projects and land-use issues she said ‘Continuous review of public interest works and their timely completion is our topmost priority.’
Gupta’s husband who holds no official party post in the Shalimar Bagh constituency attended the meeting alongside the constituency’s BJP workers.