After getting the sack, Kiran Bedi says: I did my sacred duty

Following her sudden sacking as lieutenant-governor of Puducherry, Kiran Bedi has thanked the Centre for a “lifetime experience”.

“I can say with a deep sense of satisfaction that during this tenure, ‘TeamRajNivas’ diligently worked to serve larger public interest,” Bedi said. “Whatever was done, was a sacred duty.”

Bedi’s removal comes weeks before Puducherry goes to polls, with Chief Minister V Narayanasamy saying it had been “a long-pending demand” of the people.

Narayanasamy heads the Congress-DMK alliance in the state. The government has lost its majority following the loss of four MLAs, who resigned from the assembly.

The Congress-DMK and the opposition AIADMK-BJP now have 14 MLAs each in the House, which has a current effective strength of 28.

Also read: Bedi, the mastermind of Operation Puducherry, eased out to show BJP ‘innocence’

In the past Narayanaswamy had led protests and a fast against what he called Bedi’s move to obstruct the programmes of his government and to destabilise it by engineering defections. On Wednesday he said Bedi “was behaving in an autocratic manner, violating the rules of business, trying to run a parallel government, [and] issuing independent orders against the wishes of the elected government…”

The Centre, he said, had “woken up now”.

“I do not know whether it was done because of elections. [But] whatever damage has to be done, she has done. It cannot be rectified. The people of Puducherry will remember it and it will be fresh in their memory,” Narayanasamy said.