New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly has decided to withdraw all pending committee cases against government officials that were initiated during the sixth and seventh assemblies. This decision, taken through a voice vote on Thursday, effectively closes cases related to privilege issues and other matters handled by the Privileges & Petitions Committees.
As per Rule 183 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Delhi Legislative Assembly, committee work left incomplete before the dissolution of an assembly can be carried forward to the next. When the seventh assembly was dissolved on December 4, 2024, resolutions were passed to transfer unfinished matters to three key committees: the Committee of Privileges, the Committee on Petitions, and the Questions and Reference Committee. However, this work will now be discontinued.
BJP chief whip in the Delhi Assembly, Abhay Verma, moved a petition for the withdrawal of these cases, citing a lack of progress. He pointed out that many cases had been pending for years without any proper investigation or final reports. Some of these matters also led to legal disputes in the Delhi High Court. Verma proposed that no further action should be taken on cases from the previous two assemblies and that they should be considered closed.
Speaker Vijender Gupta supported the decision, stating that if the complaints had been serious, the committees should have examined them and submitted reports. He questioned why these cases were left unresolved by previous committee members and suggested that there may have been attempts to target certain officials unfairly.
As a result of the Assembly’s decision, eight court cases involving Delhi government officers, including retired senior bureaucrats such as former chief secretaries M M Kutty and Anshu Prakash, will be closed. Other officers named in these cases include Manisha Saxena, Varsha Joshi, Amjad Tak, Amit Singla, Sanjiv Khirwar, Nidhi Srivastava, and Surbir Singh. Allegations against them ranged from contempt of the House for skipping committee summons to issues related to cooperative banks and medicine shortages.