Delhi Chief Minister and AAP president Arvind Kejriwal on Friday released his party’s 10 guarantees for the upcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections. He said his first promise is to “make Delhi beautiful” by “removing three mountains of garbage” and added that no new landfill sites will be built in the national capital.
“We will also shelve their (BJP’s) plan of building 16 new garbage mountains. We will call experts from London, Paris, and Tokyo to work this out. We will clean up the roads and galis (alleys) of Delhi,” he said. The AAP has long alleged that the BJP, during its tenure in the MCD, had planned to create 16 landfill sites alongside the three existing ones at Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bhalswa.
The AAP chief also promised to improve schools, hospitals, and parks that come under MCD. A key guarantee that he gave was to make all temporary employees permanent.
Assuring that the MCD would be rid of corruption as part of the second guarantee, Kejriwal claimed that the building department was the most corruption-prone and that the process of clearing all plans and maps would be digitized and simplified.
“Like faceless governance in the Delhi government, we will do something solid here too. We will bring a one-time scheme to regularise minor violations in buildings,” he said.
The third, fourth, and fifth guarantees include solving the parking crisis, ending the stray-animal menace and repairing roads under the MCD.
Schools, dispensaries and hospitals of the MCD are in disrepair, Kejriwal said, and promised to transform them “like we have done under our government” under the sixth guarantee.
Noting that the parks under the MCD “are a disaster”, Kejriwal said he intended to give a facelift to them and make Delhi a city of beautiful parks.
“The eighth guarantee is regularisation of contract workers. Many employees are not paid for months; they will all be paid on time. No matter how we arrange funds, everyone will get their salaries within the first week of the month,” he said.
Alleging that traders were under severe distress due to the “bribes” that need to be paid to obtain a licence, he said the AAP planned to simplify and digitise the system. “We will end conversion and parking fees. We will end the ‘inspector raj’. We will open up all the sealed shops and hear all the concerns of traders and resolve them,” he said. Under the tenth guarantee, Kejriwal promised to grant licences to hawkers to sit in vending zones.
Kejriwal chaired a crucial meeting on Wednesday with senior MLAs and office-bearers to review the party’s preparations for the MCD elections.
“The people of Delhi are actively seeking such a government in MCD that can rid them of BJP’s maladministration, corruption, garbage mountains and mismanagement. BJP has completely wrecked the MCD from inside, they’ve ruined Delhi, spread garbage all over, every gully-mohalla and park is full of garbage. Traders are being harassed and exploited by the BJP. The common man can’t even build his home unless he pays up to BJP’s mafias,” Deputy CM Manish Sisodia told reporters after the meeting on Wednesday.
Delhi’s deputy chief minister was also questioned about the selection of candidates for the MCD polls and he said that all the applications are being dealt with in a very professional manner.
“We are getting lots of applications seeking candidature in MCD elections. We’re conducting surveys to assess every application. All the applications are being dealt with in a very professional manner after which the list of candidates will be announced,” he added.
On Tuesday, AAP MLAs took part in a meeting under Sisodia and state convenor and Minister Gopal Rai ahead of the MCD elections. During the meeting, AAP office-bearers were assigned responsibilities on various levels to prepare for elections on all 250 MCD seats.
To take on the BJP, the Kejriwal-led party launched a campaign titled “Kude Par Jansamvad” on Tuesday. a public dialogue will be held at each of Delhi’s 13,682 booths, it said.
The 250-ward MCD goes to polls on December 4 and the counting of votes will take place on December 7. The BJP has been in power in the MCD — trifurcated in 2012 into north, south and east corporations and then unified this year — for three straight terms.
The high-stake civic polls are largely being seen as a three-way contest between the BJP, the AAP and the Congress.
(with inputs from PTI)
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