The Delhi assembly on Thursday passed a resolution for the permanent reinstatement of bus marshals in the city for the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and cluster buses, a year-long pending demand of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
In 2023, Delhi lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena ordered the termination of the services of all civil defence volunteers working as marshals on buses. The AAP government came up with the Bus Marshal Scheme in 2015 to ensure the safety and security of women and children on buses in the national capital as they lack control over police.
Since the past over one year, the L-G and AAP government have been in a tussle on the issue. AAP had been demanding that the service of these marshals should be reinstated. Last year, the government even approached the Supreme Court which refused to entertain the plea challenging the L-G’s decision. Instead, it asked the AAP government to go to the High Court.
On Thursday also, AAP and BJP had heated arguments over the issue in the House but the two ended up on the same page later.
While, initially, the Aam Aadmi Party MLAs accused the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre of being anti-poor, the BJP said that it is the politics of AAP that they promise fake jobs and cheat people. Leader of opposition Vijender Gupta said that even in the case of teachers the same thing happened.
“You have shattered the dreams of these young men and women. They come from very poor families. They get hope but little they know they will be cheated…The same happened with teachers in Delhi. They were promised permanent jobs but nothing happened…I present a resolution that the bus marshals should be reinstated immediately and their jobs should be made permanent,” Gupta said.
Dictating the resolution verbally, AAP minister and MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj said that unless they get a signature from the L-G on the resolution, they will not stop.
“Guptaji has said that those bus marshals who were removed should be reinstated… permanently…AAP ministers, MLAs, along with BJP MLAs, will go to L-G’s house at 11 am on October 3. Our government promises that it will return only after the files are signed,” he said.
In February 2024, a little before his arrest, then Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also raised the same issue in the House and said that the scheme worked smoothly until 2022.
This is the first assembly session since Atishi took over as the Delhi chief minister. She is expected to seek a vote of trust in the House on Friday. The total strength of the MLAs in the 70-member Delhi assembly has dropped to 66 now after AAP lost three legislators in the last few months. It now has 59 MLAs, while the BJP has seven.
AAP MLA Rajendra Pal Gautam, also a former cabinet minister, has moved to the Congress and resigned, while two more AAP MLAs, Raaj Kumar Anand and Kartar Singh, were disqualified after they moved to the BJP.
During the day, the House also saw AAP in a heated argument with the BJP, demanding that pending CAG reports be tabled in the House. The two parties also clashed over the illegal tree-cutting in Delhi.
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