Congress candidate from New Delhi Assembly seat, Sandeep Dikshit, on Saturday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s “mismanagement, incompetence and dishonesty” are the reasons for air and water pollution in Delhi.

Addressing a press conference at the party’s Delhi office, Dikshit, attacking the AAP government, said that to blame stubble burning for Delhi’s air pollution on the farmers of neighbouring states was not justified.

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He asserted that the stubble burning had existed for decades but the main cause of air pollution in the national capital was sharp spike in vehicles on the roads, in the absence of a robust public transport system, and severe erosion of the green cover.

He claimed that the DTC fleet has shrunk from around 5,500 buses during the previous Congress government to just around 3,000 buses now as the AAP government took no step to enhance the DTC fleet in the past decade.

He said that there was no stubble-burning now, still the Air Quality Index (AQI) was hovering between 300 and 400.

Referring to the previous Congress government in Delhi, the Congress candidate said, “Between 1998 and 2013, the Sheila Dikshit government had increased the green cover, brought nearly one crore vehicles under CNG fuel including DTC buses, increased the public transport and rapidly expanded the Delhi metro rail. But now, even the third phase of the metro, work on which was started by the Congress government is running behind schedule. There is no clarity on the fourth phase of the metro.”

The Congress nominee from New Delhi pointed out that the Yamuna river passing through Delhi, starting from Palla, was the most polluted stretch in the world as all the untreated human and other wastes are discharged into the river.

“The Kejriwal government had not bothered to set up sewage treatment plants, though Kejriwal had boasted in 2023 that he would clean up the river so well that he would take a dip in the Yamuna by 2025. The AAP government could not improve the water treatment capacity due to which people are forced to drink polluted water,” he said.

The accumulated losses of the Delhi Jal Board was Rs 76,000 crores due to the corruption and mismanagement, he alleged.

Mentioning about the New Delhi Assembly constituency, he said there was strong “anti-incumbency” feelings against Kejriwal, the AAP’s candidate.