Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said on Tuesday that the national capital has "some of the most efficient" bureaucrats, a day after her successor Arvind Kejriwal claimed that 90 per cent of the IAS officers do not work.
The three-time chief minister said Delhi's officers helped her in achieving her goal of transforming the city.
"Kejriwalji, Delhi has some of the most efficient bureaucrats. They helped me tirelessly in achieving my goal of transforming Delhi," Dikshit tweeted.
She was commenting on a tweet of Congress leader Pawan Khera who said taunted Kejriwal saying a "poor craftsman blames his tools."
"With the same bureaucracy Sheila Dikshit changed the face of Delhi. A poor craftsman blames his tools," Khera said.
Dikshit was the chief minister of Delhi for 15 years from 1998 to 2013, heading the Congress government in the national capital.
At an event on Monday, Kejriwal had alleged that 90 per cent of the IAS officers "do not work" and said at times he feels development was "stuck up at the secretariat".
The Delhi chief minister had also alleged that the IAS officers "obstructed files" of development works.
"Ninty per cent of them (IAS officers) do not work and hold up the files," he said, citing his proposal for the regularisation of contractual employees, as chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).
"When I proposed regularisation of contractual employees, all the officers opposed me. They said if regularised they won't work. I said, if this is the logic then all the IAS officers should be ad-hoc because they do not work," he said.
The AAP government and the bureaucracy, which comes under the Lt Governor, have been at loggerheads on several issues.
In December 2015, Delhi government bureaucrats had gone on mass leave to protest the suspension of two Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service (DANICS) cadre officers.
In May 2015, Kejriwal had accused the then acting Chief Secretary Shakuntala Gamlin of "favouring" power companies and claimed that she wanted to "trick the government into signing documents which would give Rs 11,000 crore to these firms".
Earlier this month, the government had issued an order to lock the office of a senior IAS officer after he had issued directives notifying the appointment of the then power secretary Gamlin as the acting chief secretary.
(With PTI inputs)
