Will send proposal to reinstate CDVs to LG within a week: Delhi CM

Delhi chief minister Atishi said in a press conference on Sunday that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led Delhi government will send the proposal to regularise the services of 10,000 civil defence volunteers to the lieutenant governor (LG) within a week, and challenged the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to get the proposals cleared. Atishi alleged that the volunteers were removed from service in a conspiracy by the BJP and claimed contractual employees in several BJP-ruled states had faced problems similar to CDVs in Delhi.
Hitting back, the BJP said that the Delhi government has failed to reinstate CDVs despite directions from the LG to do so by November 1. The BJP said that it appears unlikely that CDVs will be reinstated anytime soon, and added that it will hold a protest at Atishi’s residence on Monday to demand their reinstatement.
“No matter how many stories you come up with, I am coming to Atishi’s official residence at 11am on November 4 with party leaders and workers to demand the reinstatement orders for the CDVs and bus marshals,” Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said.
Last November, 10,792 CDVs, mostly working as bus marshals, were removed from their jobs after objections were raised by the revenue and finance departments on the payment of their salaries
LG VK Saxena on Saturday had written to Atishi to consider expediting the reinstatement of CDVs. In the letter that Saxena also posted on the social media site X, he said he had written to the chief minister on October 24 suggesting reinstatement of CDVs from November 1. However, he was yet to receive a response from the government, the LG added.
On Sunday, Atishi said that her government will send a detailed proposal to the LG within a week to permanently reinstate the CDVs. She said that plans have been made in a meeting last week with the environment minister to deploy CDVs to implement anti-pollution measures undertaken by different agencies. “Their deployment will begin in the next two to four days,” she said.
Atishi alleged that the BJP made efforts to block the AAP government’s proposal to the LG to reinstate CDVs. She hit out at the BJP after Sachdeva warned that the party would launch a protest against the chief minister if a proposal for reinstating CDVs and bus marshals was not sent to the LG by Sunday evening. “I want to ask the BJP leaders to stop their dirty politics on the bus marshal issue. First, their salaries were stopped in April last year and then they were removed in October 2023 due to the BJP’s conspiracy,” she said.
In response, Sachdeva said, “It is strange and ironic that chief minister Atishi is agitated by the BJP’s demand to follow the lieutenant governor’s directive to reinstate the CDVs and bus marshals. She is citing examples from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, yet she fails to explain why her government hasn’t reinstated them from November 1 despite clear orders from the lieutenant governor.”
“CDVs are temporary workers who receive a daily wage, and due to Atishi’s government’s negligence, it doesn’t seem that these volunteers will be reinstated in the next three-four days. As a result, they are losing at least seven days of wages this month. We challenge Atishi to name even one BJP-governed state where contract workers are being removed or are facing wage crises,” he added.