Ruling AAP, Opposition BJP MLAs indulge in blame game over removal of bus marshals

The ruling AAP and opposition BJP MLAs indulged in blame game over the issue of removal of the bus marshals on the first day of the last session of the five-year tenure of the Delhi Assembly on Friday, with Chief Minister Atishi saying the proposal to reinstate them was pending with the Raj Niwas.

 Participating in a discussion over the the issue, Atishi said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will not field any candidate against Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta from Rohini assembly seat if he convinced Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena to approve the proposal for reinstating 10,000 bus marshals.

 Speaking in a lighter vein, the chief minister also said she will campaign for Gupta in the elections if he got the proposal approved by the LG.  She defended AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal who was accused by the BJP of directing to remove the bus marshals from November, 2023.

 In his letter on October 20, 2023, Kejriwal had said the bus marshals should not be removed and action need to be taken against the officers who stopped payment of their salaries, she said.

 The chief minister asserted that the presence of uniformed marshals prevented incidents of misbehaviour with women and girls in the buses. But the LG got them removed without caring for the safety of women, she charged.

 The ruling AAP MLAs hit at the BJP alleging they got the bus marshals removed through the LG and thereby created livelihood problems for them and their families.  The BJP MLAs retorted saying the bus marshals were removed on the direction of Kejriwal, the then chief minister, and now AAP was doing politics over their reinstatement.

 BJP MLA Abhay Verma questioned the ruling party saying why was it in power if it cannot give back bus marshals their jobs. Gupta sought answers from Atishi saying the AAP government deployed bus marshals and then removed them.

 "It is surprising that the ruling party is saying the opposition BJP should give the bus marshals their jobs back," the leader of opposition said, and claimed that a committee suggested by the chief minister to regularise the bus marshals was not yet formed.

 The LG wrote to Atishi to start the regularisation of bus marshals and in the interim provide them jobs for four months, he said. The AAP government has not done anything to implement it, he claimed.  Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj attacked Gupta, saying he tried to evade meeting the LG alongwith the chief minister for reinstatement of the bus marshals.