The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to the Centre on 6 appeals of the Delhi government, challenging the High Court verdict that held that the Lieutenant Governor (LG) is the administrative head of the national capital.
The Supreme Court declined, for now, to stay the order of HC verdict, and LG’s control to set up a committee to review the Aam Aadmi Party’s past decisions.
A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Ashutosh Kumar referred to the 4 August judgment passed by a division bench of the High Court and said these issues had already been dealt with in the verdict.
The bench, which granted 6 weeks time to the central government for filing its response to the appeals, also did not agree with the claim that the decision of Lieutenant Governor to set up a 3-members panel to examine the past decisions of the Delhi government should stay.
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In addition to that, The Supreme Court has granted the Centre 6 weeks to file replies and fix them for the final hearing on 15 November.
On September 2, the Delhi government had notified the Supreme Court that it has filed 6 different pleas challenging the Delhi HC order and withdrawn its civil suit seeking the declaration of the national capital as a full State.
The court had allowed the AAP government to withdraw the civil suit and given the opportunity to raise the issues proposed in it in the Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) it has filed.
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The apex court had asked the AAP government last month that whether it would file a petition against the HC order of holding Delhi as a Union Territory with LG as its administrative head
It had said the Delhi government required to file the SLP as the civil suit would become “infructuous” as the Centre had vehemently opposed the AAP government’s plea, saying it can’t continue parallel recourse for the same relief.
Earlier, The High Court said in its August 4 verdict that the special constitutional provision Article 239AA dealing with Delhi does not “dilute” the effect of Article 239 which links to Union Territory and hence, the concurrence of the LG in administrative issues was “mandatory”.