Arvind Kejriwal Refused Meeting On Delhi Smog By Punjab Chief Minister

Amarinder Singh, Punjab Chief Minister, has refused to meet his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal, who had tweeted him Tuesday morning requesting an appointment to discuss the deadly smog that has enveloped Delhi for more than a week. Mr Singh has reiterated his stand that a meeting will be of no use and said he does not have "the same luxury of time" as Mr Kejriwal.

Arvind Kejriwal has blamed the burning of crop stubble by farmers in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana as the major cause of the spiking pollution in Delhi. "Sir, I am coming to Chandigarh on Wed to meet Haryana CM. Would be grateful if u cud spare sometime to meet me. It is in collective interest," the Delhi chief minister had tweeted to Amarinder Singh, who had last week called Mr Kejriwal a "peculiar person with views on everything but no understanding."

The Punjab Chief Minister's reply on Tuesday evening was tweeted by his media adviser Raveen Thukral: "Stop politicising the #pollution issue, you know any meeting between us would be useless, and in any case now that the apex court is also seized of the matter, let us leave it to them and the central govt to find long-term solutions."

In Chandigarh, Mr Singh said he "failed to understand why the Delhi Chief Minister is trying to force my hand, knowing well that any such discussion will be meaningless and futile." He accused Mr Kejriwal, who heads the Aam Aadmi Party, Punjab's principal opposition party, of trying to divert attention from his government's failure to check pollution in Delhi. "Kejriwal's tendency to indulge in petty street politics is well known," the Punjab Chief Minister said.

On Tuesday, Mr Kejirwal is set to meet ML Khattar, the Chief Minister of Haryana, with whom an appointment was fixed after a strange back-and-forth; both said publicly that while they were willing to meet, the other side seemed unavailable.
 Mr Kejriwal finally tweeted that "Khattarji had called" and he would travel to Chandigarh on Wednesday to meet him. Mr Khattar, he said, had refused to meet him while on a two-day visit to Delhi this week.

Mr Khattar had said earlier that while he would be in Delhi on Monday and Tuesday, "there is no response from your office on meeting," to which Mr Kejriwal tweeted, "Sir, my office is constantly trying to fix meeting."

The exchanges began after Arvind Kejriwal last week that he had written to both the other chief ministers requesting to meet them, but had not been given appointments. Both Mr Singh and ML Khattar have accused Mr Kejriwal of attempting to politicise the issue of pollution.

Amarinder Singh has asserted that Delhi's pollution crisis has been cause by "mismanaged transportation and unplanned industrial development." Instead of focusing all his attention on resolving these issues, he said, "Kejriwal wants to waste time with holding useless discussions."

The chief ministers' spat and public sparring has been criticised by experts as a distraction from what has been described by doctors as a public health crisis in Delhi -- a thick cloud of toxic smog 10 times the recommended limit.

The smog has been blamed on dust from construction, vehicle exhaust and the illegal crop burning in the neighbouring states.

(With inputs from IANS)