Jahanvi Agarwal
Raghav Chadha, an MP of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), moved a petition before the Delhi High Court on October 10, 2023, to vacate the trial court’s decision to overturn an interim order that authorized the Rajya Sabha secretariat to remove him from the government residence assigned to him.
The lawyer representing Chadha told the court that the AAP leader had received a notice and that eviction procedures are underway.
The case was referred for an urgent hearing before a bench consisting of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula. The appeal has been scheduled for October 11, 2023, by the Supreme Court of India.
The Patiala House Court on October 5 stated that Chadha could not assert an absolute right to inhabit the government mansion while rescinding an interim order issued on April 18 that had instructed the Rajya Sabha Secretariat not to evict Chadha from the government bungalow.
It is noteworthy that in July of last year, Chadha received a Type 6 home. In September of that year, the Rajya Sabha Chairman granted his request for a larger Type 7 lodging. The Secretariat, however, revoked the allocation in March, claiming the first-time MP was not eligible for a bungalow of that type. After doing renovations, the AAP leader then moved into the house with his parents.
In the 2nd week of October 2023, the AAP MP asserted that the cancellation of his allotted bungalow in the capital was “arbitrary and unprecedented” and claimed that it was a result of “dictates of the BJP to further their political motives and vested interests.”
He was of the opinion that:
“It is unprecedented in more than 70 years of history of Rajya Sabha that a sitting Rajya Sabha member is sought to be removed from his duly allotted accommodation where he has been residing for a while and more than 4 years of his tenure as Rajya Sabha member are still remaining. The manner of the entire exercise leaves me with no option but to believe that these have been carried out at the dictates of the BJP to further their political motives and vested interest in order to scuttle and stifle the political criticism raised by the vocal parliamentarians like me.”