Delhi HC reserves order on plea by BJP MLAs over placing CAG reports in assembly

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday reserved its order on a plea by opposition MLAs seeking a sitting of the Delhi assembly for tabling of several CAG reports on the city government.

Justice Sachin Datta reserved the verdict after hearing senior lawyers appearing for the petitioners, the Speaker as well as the Delhi government.

Opposition leader Vijender Gupta and BJP MLAs -- Mohan Singh Bisht, Om Prakash Sharma, Ajay Kumar Mahawar, Abhay Verma, Anil Kumar Bajpai and Jitendra Mahajan -- filed the petition last year and sought a direction to the Speaker to call a sitting of the assembly for the purpose of tabling of the CAG reports.

The petitioners filed the plea through lawyers Neeraj and Satya Ranjan Swain.

The senior lawyers for the Speaker as well as the government opposed the passing of such a direction by the court and said there was no urgency to table the reports at this stage when the assembly elections were to be held soon.

The petitioners' senior counsel, on the other hand, accused the government of delaying the matter and said the upcoming elections made the placing of the audit reports in the assembly even more pertinent.

In a reply filed in the matter, the assembly secretariat has maintained that no useful purpose would be served in laying CAG reports before the assembly when its tenure was ending in February and no judicial order could be passed to the Speaker in matters of internal functioning of the legislative assembly.

During a hearing held on January 13, the court had orally remarked that the CAG reports should have been promptly placed before the assembly for discussion and the state government "dragging its feet" on the issue raised "doubts on its bonafides".