LG chairs law, order meet; Sisodia calls him ‘dictator’

New Delhi :  Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia called Lt. Governor Anil Baijal a “dictator” and accused him of running a “parallel government” after the latter chaired a law and order meeting and reviewed the status of CCTVs in the city.

“LG Sir, please don’t be a dictator. This is an attempt to run a parallel government in Delhi. It is illegal. You don’t have power to call meeting on issues under elected government’s domain,” Sisodia tweeted after the Lt Governor wrote about the meeting on the micro-blogging site.

He added that under the Constitution, the Lt. Governor could only express “difference of opinion” on decisions taken by the elected government. “Please respect the Constitution,” said Sisodia.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also tweeted on it, saying, “LG shud respect and follow the constitution”.

Earlier, Baijal tweeted: “Chaired law and order meeting on current status of CCTV cameras in Delhi… Directed to have an inter-agency group to formulate a SOP to have uniformity in installation and address issues of privacy, security, feed-sharing, integration and optimum utilisation.”

Later, he issued a statement saying that operation and maintenance of CCTVs is “extremely important”, and poor maintenance must be checked by deterrent liability clauses.

He said that Delhi Police made a detailed presentation which informed him about the identified places for installation of CCTVs cameras especially in view of directions of High Court.

At present, 4,067 CCTVs are installed at 87 different sites by Delhi Police, while proposal for installation of 1,380 cameras is under active consideration by Home Ministry.

The statement also said that at 29 sites, ‘Automatic Number Plate Recognition’ cameras have been put in place which send automatic alerts to the control room.

IANS