The Aam Aadmi Party government hired senior advocate and former union minister P Chidambaram to appear for it in the Supreme Court in a case to decide Delhi's administrative head, prompting the Congress on Friday to dig up the tense past between its leader and AAP.

Chidambaram has joined the legal team that will argue the pleas challenging a Delhi High Court ruling that the lieutenant governor is the administrative boss of the Capital.

While senior Congress leaders refrained from questioning the former home and finance minister for taking up the job, AAP insisted that "there have been previous instances where political leaders have fought legal cases in favour of their political adversaries."

AAP has on several occasions attacked Chidambaram, alleging financial irregularities and of representing the BSES at a time his colleagues in Delhi Congress were protesting against the power distribution company, among other things.

Senior AAP leader and former MLA Jarnail Singh, who had hurled a shoe at Chidambaram, was inducted into the party after the incident.

Delhi government official spokesperson Nagendar Sharma tagged Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken in 2015 on Twitter and wrote, "Poor Delhi Cong leaders demand action against BSES but their senior leaders Chidambaram and Sibal argue in Supreme Court for immediate government payment. Ajay Maken, ask your senior colleagues P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi who appear for discoms how they got a court stay."

'CHIDAMBARAM REPRESENTING THE DELHI GOVT, NOT PURSUING AN A.A.P CASE'

Chidambaram too has on several instances hit out at Kejriwal, more recently on the CM's remark about turning Delhi into London.

"I read today someone wants to make Delhi (into) London. I wish them well but let them make the city what it was 20 years ago, before they decide to make it London. I sincerely hope the next idea is not to have a Lord Mayor of Delhi like the Lord Mayor of London," he said in March.

Approached for a comment, Chidambaram maintained that the case he had taken up was for the Delhi government and not the "Kejriwal government".

Maken too said Chidambaram is a professional advocate and is not pursuing an Aam Aadmi Party case but will be representing the Delhi government. "Kejriwal has finally fallen onto the feet of Chidambaram whom he himself once criticised," he told Mail Today.

While the Congress accused AAP of hypocrisy, it must be noted that Chidambaram, who served as home minister between 2008 and 2012 had the opportunity to initiate a process to tweak the "Transaction of Business Rules Delhi" in a bid to expand the city government's autonomy but did not do so.

Senior Congress leader and son of former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Sandeep Dikshit, was the only leader who in a long post on social media questioned Chidambaram on the matter. "...when he was the home minister what was his stand on the issue? Officials and ministers used to complain that the home ministry would humiliate the Delhi government and Chidambaram always backed the ministry..." he wrote.

However, the Congress party's official stand on expanding the Delhi government's autonomy is that the existing setup has no inherent problems.

"The Congress government that served three full terms in the national Capital faced no such trouble. Of course, from 1998 to 2004 there were differences when the Congress was in power in the state and there was the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre but we managed to resolve those issues. The AAP is raking up the issue to divert attention from its nonperformance," Maken insisted.

A.A.P MLA DEFENDS MOVE

Defending the move, AAP MLA and official spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj said Chidambaram was not representing AAP and was part of the legal team as a constitutional expert. So the move did not amount to hypocrisy, he said.

"The representation by Chidambaram is akin to what several legal experts and politicians have done in the past...Arun Jaitley, Salman Khursheed and Ravi Shankar Prasad have appeared for various industrialists and political parties in their professional capacity," he said. "Siddharth Luthra, an ASG under Congress government, represented Jaitley in his defamation case."

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