Amid sudden resignation of Najeeb Jung as Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, former bureaucrat Anil Baijal has taken over as administrative head of the national capital.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was present when Baijal, 70, was administered oath as the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Delhi this morning by High Court chief Justice G Rohini at Raj Niwas in Civil Lanes area of North Delhi.
Baijal, after taking oath, thanked President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and said:
“I hope we will work together with the elected government. We have too many problems, law and order, women safety, pollution, infrastructure. We will work on all of this.”
On previous Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung’s tussle with the Delhi government, he said:
“This is speculative. We will sit and talk and you will come to know whether relations have improved or not.”
Anil Baijal retired in 2006 as the Secretary of the Urban Development Ministry. As Union Home Secretary, he had been shifted to the Urban Development Ministry in a rejig after the UPA government came to power in 2004.
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A former vice-chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, Mr Baijal was involved with the designing and roll-out of Rs. 60,000 crore Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission launched by the Manmohan Singh government.
He was also on the executive council of the think-tank Vivekananda International Foundation, several of whose former members, including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, have been appointed to senior positions by PM Modi’s government.
Mr Baijal, known to follow the rule book, will have to take a series of important decisions including on the report of Shungulu committee, set up by Mr Jung to examine over 400 files pertaining to decisions taken by the AAP government in the last two years.
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The Shungulu committee has reportedly pointed out “irregularities” in some of the Kejriwal Government’s decisions.
Najeeb Jung had unexpectedly submitted his resignation on December 22, almost 18 months before his tenure was scheduled to end. His tenure had been marked with constant conflict with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal since the Aam Aadmi Party government swept to power in Delhi in 2015.
Accusing Mr Jung of being the ‘Centre’s agent’, Kejriwal had alleged that the BJP-led Central government was carrying on a proxy war with the Delhi government through him.