Delhi’s former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are most remembered for the fierce power struggle that came to define one of the most controversial eras in India’s history of federalism.
But three years later, it seems Jung, after leaving his post, has let bygones be bygones. Talking to a news channel, the former IAS officer is all praises for Kejriwal-led AAP government, saying, the performance had improved a lot in the last one year.
“I think as a chief minister, Arvind has his heart in the right place,” Jung, who had suddenly resigned as the L-G in December 2016 after a long-running feud with the CM.
Jung’s comment a few weeks before Delhi goes to polls.
The two now share a good personal relationship, he said, and any acrimony between them is a myth.
“We looked at things differently. I respect him for that because politicians often see things differently from the trained civil servants like myself,” he opined.
Describing the growth that he has seen in Kejriwal, Jung said he has become a “much, much better” administrator over the last one year, as he talked about the importance for a government to take the civil servants with them. “He has learnt in six years, I think,” he added.
Reflecting on it, the seasoned bureaucrat who also served as the Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, said the AAP government would have performed even better had it a willing bureaucracy with it.
“That was an impediment for him (Kejriwal) only because his relations with civil servants were never the best. He had the desire to work quickly: systems should work quickly but systems have their own momentum. You can’t short cut procedures,” he said, adding, “We can develop systems to hurry them up but at that time civil servants were not ready to work the way Arvind wanted them to. This adversely impacted his own administration.”