New Delhi: Slamming Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, BJP Member of Parliament Meenakshi Lekhi on Friday said that by approving the app-based bus service, Delhi government violated several mandatory legal provisions and deliberately chose not to consult the law and finance departments with malafide intentions.
"It is shocking that the Lt. Governor has so far not given any permission to introduce the premium app-based bus service but the Kejriwal government on May 20 brought out a notification saying that the Lt. Governor has approved the bus service," Lekhi told reporters here.
"This by itself is a criminal offence," she said, adding that it is being alleged that the Kejriwal government is favouring a Gurugram-based bus aggregator.
She said even the Delhi High Court had in an order directed that before introduction of any new cluster bus service in Delhi the proposal should be placed before the court, but the Kejriwal government chose to ignore even the court's directives.
Lekhi said it appears that the note of the Delhi government's proposed bus service was prepared by some individual corporate aggregator. However, at the meeting called by the Delhi Government on this issue a few other aggregators opposed the scheme citing the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.
Lekhi also said: "It has also come out that rather than the then minister Gopal Rai or transport department Officials, the note which the AAP government presented is more or less same as the one prepared by Ashish Khetan of Delhi Dialogue Commission".
"It is important to note that Rai has quit as the Transport Minister while Khetan has surprisingly gone on a leave even as his scheme is under scanner," she said.