Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva on Saturday claimed by pushing the cleaning date of all three major landfill sites to 2028, the Aam Aadmi Party has lost its right to remain in power at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Sachdeva remarked that from 2016 to November 2023, AAP leaders, especially Arvind Kejriwal and Durgesh Pathak, made countless promises to the people of Delhi, assuring that they would rid Delhi of garbage and clean up the landfill sites once they are in power in the civic body.
The Delhi BJP chief said that, back in the day, just before municipal elections, on October 27, 2022, then Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal visited the Ghazipur landfill site, and had promised the people of the city that all three landfill sites would be cleared on priority once his party comes to power in the civic body.
However, after coming to power in the MCD, AAP postponed the scheduled landfill clean-up dates set during BJP’s tenure and issued a third deadline, wherein the Okhla site was to be cleared by the end of 2024, Bhalswa by the end of 2026, and Ghazipur by the end of 2026, Sachdeva added.
The BJP leader has alleged that now the AAP is avoiding these deadlines.
The Delhi BJP chief further said that people of Delhi handed over the reins of the MCD to AAP in November 2022 elections, believing that with both the Delhi government and the Municipal Corporation under one party, the city would become cleaner, pollution-free, and development would accelerate, but, 22 months after AAP assumed control, the people of Delhi are now shocked and regretful as they witness the city’s worsening condition, Sachdeva claimed.
Sachdeva acknowledged that although the pace of the landfill clean-up couldn’t be accelerated due to a lack of funds, and added that the BJP administration significantly improved Delhi’s public sanitation system between 2017 and 2022.
He claimed that towards the end of 2021, the BJP had managed to clear 25 per cent of the Bhalswa landfill, 20 per cent of Ghazipur, and 33 per cent of Okhla, where a waste-to-energy plant had also been set up.
“Had the BJP still been in power, all three landfill sites would have been cleaned by now,” Sachdeva claimed.
In 2022, the AAP assumed control of the MCD, creating a “double government” in Delhi, however, due to the non-formation of a standing committee, civic services have come to a halt, and the landfill clean-up date has now been postponed to 2028, betraying the public mandate for 2022-27, Sachdeva claimed.
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor alleged that AAP leader Durgesh Pathak and Mayor Shelly Oberoi, who had claimed they would clean up the landfill sites within a year, have turned Delhi into the capital of garbage, and both should resign.
Kapoor claimed that between 2016 and 2022, Durgesh Pathak, held a press conference almost every month on the issue of landfill clean-up, however, now that the AAP has quietly pushed the landfill clean-up date to 2028.