The BJP on Thursday blamed AAP government's 'negligence' for the 'delay' in the hanging of Nirbhaya gangrape case convicts, saying it took more than two and a half years for the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation to give notice to convicts after Supreme Court rejected their appeal against the death sentence in 2017.

Senior BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters that had the AAP government given notices to all convicts within a week of the Supreme Court order, they would have been hanged by now and the nation would have got justice.

In a response to the allegations, the AAP said that law and order comes under the Centre and the BJP is lying to mislead the people.

Hitting back, AAP leader Sanjay Singh said it is an 'insensitive and uninformative lie' as the law and order is completely under the Centre.

'Whatever delay is taking place, the BJP is responsible and that is why instead of misleading people, the Union minister should apologise for ignoring such a sensitive matter,' he told reporters.

The Delhi government on Wednesday recommended rejecting the mercy plea filed by Mukesh Singh, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, and forwarded it to the LG at 'lightning speed', deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said.

It also informed the high court during a hearing that execution of the convicts will not take place on January 22 as a mercy plea has been filed by one of them.

The four convicts -- Mukesh (32) Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) were to be hanged on January 22 at 7am in Tihar jail. A Delhi court had issued their death warrants on January 7.