New Delhi: Union Minister Manish Tewari on Monday faced the brunt of the disruptions caused here due to the sit-in by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as he was allegedly heckled and was forced to walk for some distance for official work.
The Information and Broadcasting Minister was going from his office in Shastri Bhawan to Shram Shakti Bhawan, a distance of about one kilometer, when his car was stopped midway by the participants of the dharna. He had to dump his car and walk up to the Shram Shakti Bhawan which houses the Labour Ministry.
Tewari, who was to meet Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes in Shram Shakti Bhawan, said he was even heckled by the crowd.
Attacking Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over the dharna, the Minister said it was resorting to 'gimmickry' as its leaders know they will not be able to deliver on the promises made by them.
"AAP was not given a mandate by the people of Delhi to create anarchy. It's high time AAP makes the transition from being agitators to administrators," he said. He said the protest is nothing else but the breakdown of the constitutional system.
"These gentlemen who have been given a mandate to govern Delhi are unfortunately creating anarchy on the streets of Delhi. Therefore I was left with no other option but to walk from Parliament House to Shram Shakti Bhawan to meet the homnourable labour minister.
"And along the way I think my act of walking which was a defiance of the curfew, which they are trying to impose in Delhi, to the anarchy which they are perpetrating must have irked them, so they tried to heckle me," Tewari said.
Tewari questioned AAP's decision to sit on dharna, saying what would happen if union ministers start sitting staging protest outside state secretariats where there are opposition governments. "Will there not be chaos and complete anarchy in this country? Is this why people elect us?" he asked.
Tewari said as a minister, it was his responsibility to ensure that work of governance went on smoothly and 'just because the Chief Minister of Delhi and his colleagues decide to create anarchy on the streets, all governance is not going to come to a halt'. He also questioned the basis of the protest.
The Congress leader said, "If we expect that countries treat our citizens with dignity, it is incumbent upon us to treat foreign nationals in India with an equal amount of dignity.
"Assuming there was some illegality which was perpetrated, it has to be dealt with in accordance with the law. And when there was a violation of the law and the Delhi court decided to step in, so therefore, then you try to take the moral high ground which is completely absent in this particular case," he said.
Later, Tewari took to Twitter to say that he had "enjoyed walk for Governance from Parliament to Labour Ministry past the rites of anarchy".
