NDMC suspends 18 AAP councillors for 15 days

NEW DELHI: North Delhi Municipal Corporation mayor Avtar Singh on Monday suspended 18 AAP councillors and seven aldermen from the House for 15 days for “creating ruckus and interrupting the proceedings”.
“We had to call in the marshalls to usher them out. They were disturbing the functioning of the House for the past three meetings leading to wastage of time and resources,” the mayor said.
Singh said while the House agreed to discuss dengue and measures required to stop breeding of mosquitoes, the AAP councillors insisted on taking up another issue.
“The AAP councillors wanted to save their party, which has done nothing to control vector-borne diseases in the city. In fact, the AAP government is taking credit for the work done by us. It is wasting money on advertisements instead of giving us funds to control mosquito breeding,” said Jai Prakash, standing committee chairman.
Criticising the move, AAP councillor and leader of the opposition Sujeet Pawar said, “The mayor is acting like a dictator and we will not tolerate it. Despite accepting my short notice, they didn’t let us start discussion on corruption in operation of parking lots.”
Despite being suspended and mashalled out, AAP councillors returned to the House. “This forced us to adjourn. The next meeting will take place on Friday. Special arrangements will be made to ensure that AAP councillors don’t enter,” said leader of the House Tilakraj Kataria.