Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh on Tuesday attacked the central government for not granting clearance to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to visit Denmark for a climate summit, ANI reported. Singh said Kejriwal was not going to Denmark for a vacation but to hold a conference with mayors of 100 cities of Asia.

“This is very unfortunate,” Singh told ANI. “I don’t know why the Narendra Modi-led government is behaving with such hostility towards us. Because Kejriwal was not going to Denmark for a vacation. He was going to the summit to tell mayors of 100 cities how pollution was reduced by 25% in Delhi.”

Singh said the world believes India produces much pollution, but Kejriwal was going to Denmark to highlight a positive aspect of India. “They have made a joke of the system,” Singh said. “How many chief ministers’ official visits have been cancelled in the past?” Singh said Kejriwal was to hold bilateral talks with mayors of four cities.

“Why are they so hostile to us?” Singh asked. “Manish Sisodia wants to go to Moscow to talk about Delhi’s education system, but his trip was cancelled. Health Minister Satyendar Jain wanted to go to Australia to talk about Delhi’s health system, his trip was cancelled too.”

“What is our crime?” Singh asked. “Is Kejriwal’s crime only that he was elected chief minister by the people of Delhi?” The AAP leader claimed that the Modi-led government’s denial of permission had hurt India’s image abroad. “What will the mayors of 100 cities think about India?” Singh asked. “This is not good for our democracy.”

The C40 Climate Summit begins in Denmark on October 9, and will end on October 12, PTI reported. Kejriwal was to leave for Denmark at 2 pm on Tuesday.

Last week, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had said in response to a query that a decision on permission to go abroad is taken on the basis of multiple considerations. “I do not answer query specific to political clearance,” he said. “And if you understand how it functions, we get hundreds of requests for political clearances every month from ministries, secretaries, bureaucrats. A decision is based on multiple inputs.”

The Delhi Assembly elections are scheduled for early next year. In the 2015 elections, the AAP won 67 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party three and the Congress zero.

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