Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung on Friday hit back at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for ridiculing and calling him Prime Minister Narendra Modi's man, saying such remarks were unbecoming of the head of a government.
The four-page missive from Jung comes a day after Kejriwal had shot off an angry letter following the Lt. Governor's decision to reject the appointment of Swati Maliwal as the chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, accusing Jung of working at Modi's behest and deriding his claim of his being the government in Delhi.
"I must say that the tone of your letter leaves me deeply disappointed. Such inappropriate references vis-a-vis the prime minister do not reflect well on the chief minister of a union territory.
"Your letter, being in public domain, leads to unsavoury and avoidable comments not just within the country, but also overseas," he said, adding that Kejriwal had clearly misunderstood the context in which Jung had described himself as the government.
Jung said the chief minister seemed not to understand the information conveyed through his July 21 letter "wherein the formal definition of government has been enunciated" as per statutes including the clarification issued by the central government in 2002 which reads "'government' means the Lt.Governor of the National Capital Territory of Delhi" appointed by the president under the constitution's article 239 read with article 239AA.
"By no stretch of imagination does this mean that the government can function outside the domain defined in the Constitution, a document drafted by the best minds of our country. It simply means that Delhi, being not a state, is a union territory, and the Lt.Governor is a representative of the president of India, and indeed the government of India."
