Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal has appointed a team of 39 lawyers to represent him in matters related to the government’s Services Department, The Times of India reported on Friday. This department handles transfers, promotions and disciplinary action against bureaucrats.
The lawyers will appear on behalf of Baijal before the Delhi High Court and the Central Administrative Tribunal. A new standing counsel, two additional standing counsels and 11 panel lawyers will appear before the High Court, and the other 25 will represent Baijal at the Central Administrative Tribunal.
Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia, who is also the minister for the services department, was not consulted before the lawyers were appointed, The Times of India quoted unidentified sources in the Aam Aadmi Party government as saying.
The Services Department had invited applications from lawyers on Baijal’s orders in September. At the time, Sisodia protested that even the Law Department was opposed to the order, and that he had been kept in the dark.
The Services Department made the decision based on a Delhi High Court order from 2016, which ruled that the lieutenant governor had supremacy in running the affairs of the state. The Aam Aadmi Party government has approached the Supreme Court against this verdict, and the party had said that no bureaucrat obeyed the orders of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
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