By IANS,
New Delhi : Delhi Mayor Arti Mehra Friday urged Lt. Governor Tejinder Khanna to direct Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit not to interfere in the mayor’s domain.
Mehra, who is from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told Khanna in a letter that Dikshit was not respecting her (Mehra’s) rights as the head of Delhi city.
Mehra found fault with Dikshit’s decision to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with various other cities, including Tokyo, “which in principle is not correct”.
The “mayor of Delhi should have been involved in signing any MOU or entering into any kind of agreement with any other city. But unfortunately the chief minister did not even inform the mayor”.
Mehra pointed out: “In the past no mayor would dare to question the chief minister or protest as the two were (from) the same political party. Such acts repeatedly encroaching my jurisdiction left me with no choice but to send (this) letter … for further action.”
The mayor is the head of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the largest of three civic bodies in the Indian capital. It manages over 85 percent of the city’s land area.
The mayor said she was neither informed nor involved in an earlier agreement reached between the ministry of external affairs and the chief minister on the one side and the mayor of Yeravan in Armenia on the other, to name a street in Anand Niketan area in south Delhi after Armenia.
“Even now the entire protocol and related arrangements are being made by the chief minister’s office, whereas this is my prerogative as the mayor.
“I will not be a silent spectator and watch my authority slowly eroded by the chief minister.”