NEW DELHI: Days ahead of civic polls in the city, Dilli Ki Yogshala is back in controversy. Countering Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s claim that the scheme was stopped by Lieutenant Governor (L-G) VK Saxena, which the minister made at an event on Friday, sources in L-G house said the decision to discontinue the ‘Dilli Ki Yogshala’ scheme in its “present form” was taken by the Board of Governors of the fully autonomous Delhi Pharmaceutical Science & Research University (DPSRU), adding that the statements made by AAP leaders on were “totally false and misleading.”
“The decision to discontinue the Yogshala programme in its present form was taken by the Board of Governors (BoG) of the fully autonomous DPSRU, and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had authorised the DPSRU BoG to take any such decision in writing,” the officials claimed.
DPSRU looks after the total administration of the Yogshala programme. The officials alleged that running Yogshala in its present form was illegal and that Sisodia was aware of it. “The implementation of the scheme was totally illegal, which the BoG acknowledged. Despite this, he (Sisodia) expected the DPSRU to take the unlawful decision of continuing the programme so that he and the AAP government could remain absolved of wrongdoing,” the official added.
They further alleged that after the university decided to discontinue the Yogshala programme, Sisodia and Kejriwal pressurized L-G to overrule the BoG’s mandate. “Once the University decided to discontinue Yogshala, Sisodia first tried to steamroll it through a note in which he took the diametrically opposite position with regard to the autonomy of the university, and then moved a one-page note dated October 26, 2022, endorsed by CM Kejriwal, asking the L-G to blatantly and illegally overrule the DPSRU’s decision,” a senior official claimed.
Clarifying the L-G position, the officials claimed that upon being asked to endorse a “patently illegal proposal” put up by the CM and his deputy, Saxena upheld the statutory position that clearly bars anyone, including the L-G, from infringing upon the reasonable decision of an autonomous institution. At a yoga instructor felicitation ceremony held earlier in the day, Friday, Kejriwal said: “It was very sad when the LG sir banned the yoga classes in Delhi. But we were determined not to let yoga stop.”