Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has given the go-ahead call to dismiss 223 employees at the Delhi Commission for Women, deeming their employment “irregular” and “illegal”. The Lieutenant Governor’s decision follows an investigation report that claims former chairperson of the DCW, Swati Maliwal, appointed the staff members without permission.
According to reports, Swati Maliwal allegedly hired these employees without the approval of the finance department and the Lieutenant Governor.
The order, issued by the additional director of the Women and Child Development department, states that only 40 positions were authorized under the DCW Act, and no approval was sought for appointing additional members.
The DCW did not have the authority to engage them as contractual employees, the order states.
The order mentions that the DCW did not follow proper procedures when appointing the staff, and no assessment was conducted to determine the actual need for additional staff and the eligibility criteria for each position.
It further states that no administrative approval or sanctioned expenditure was obtained from the Government of NCT Delhi for hiring the employees, and no job applications were issued.
The order also notes that the employees in these positions were not assigned any roles or responsibilities.
However, in a post on X, Swati Maliwal reacted to the order calling it a “Tughlaqi Framaan”. She stated, “LG sahab has issued a Tughlaqi Farmaan to remove all the contract staff of DCW”. There are ninety people working for the Women’s Commission today; only eight are government employees; the remaining are on three-month contracts. The Women’s Commission will be locked if all contract employees are fired. This institution was created with blood and sweat, so why are these people doing this? I will not allow the Women’s Commission to be closed as long as I live; instead of providing it with staff and protection, you are destroying it from the ground up. She continued in the post, “Put me in jail, don’t torture women.”
