Barely six days after Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal praised Arvind Kejriwal government’s work in the Capital on the opening day of the Budget session, the two once again locked horns on Wednesday over the implementation of doorstep delivery of ration.

Chief Minister Kejriwal took a barb at the L-G for rejecting the doorstep delivery of ration and called it “petty politics”. Kejriwal maintained that he had repeatedly requested the L-G to give him an audience before taking a decision but the Lt Governor did not do so.

Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, the Chief Minister said, “V sad that Hon’ble LG has rejected doorstep delivery of ration scheme. I had repeatedly requested him to give me an audience before taking a decision but he did not. Feeling really really sad that such imp proposals are becoming victims of petty politics.”

Kejriwal said that the L-G also rejected the cabinet’s decision to suspend operation of POS machines, which made Aadhar card mandatory to receive rations.

Later in an official statement from the Chief Minister’s office, the AAP government accused the L-G for rejecting its proposal on the basis of “motivated objections” made by some bureaucrats.

“The L-G has chosen not to accept the cabinet decisions on the basis of motivated objections made by some bureaucrats. Each of these objections were overruled by respective ministers on the file giving detailed reasons. The elected government is of the view that it is a matter of real sadness that the L-G has completely ignored the comments of ministers and relied on completely ridiculous and irrelevant objections made by some bureaucrats to stall such a revolutionary project,” the statement read.

However, rebutting the allegations, the L-G office in a statement said, “that it is incorrect to say that the Lt Governor has rejected proposal for doorstep delivery of ration.”

The statement said that in the departmental file, finance department has observed that the proposed system of home delivery of ration will only replace one set of human intervention with other (service providers and their agents). Hence, diversion of ration materials and corruption may not be eliminated under the proposed scheme.

The statement said that the Law Department has also pointed out that introduction of proposed scheme would require prior approval of Central Government under Section 12(2)(h) of the said Act.

“As such, L-G advised that the proposal of home delivery of ration under targeted public distribution scheme (TPDS) may be referred to Government of India with full details including all implementation issues, before a final decision is taken. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that the L-G has rejected the proposal for home delivery of ration under TPDS,” the statement read.

The statement said on the proposal to suspend operation of e-POS devices in FPSs, L-G noted that introduction of e-POS devices to ensure end-to-end computerisation of TPDS is a national level reform in order to plug leakages and bring about transparency.

“L-G also mentioned that since introduction of e-POS devices is a national level reform, it would also be useful to consult the Central Government to understand from experiences of other states, UTs, if any problems were faced initially in the implementation of e-POS and how these were resolved,” the statement said.