Terming the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled municipal corporations “dens of corruption”, the Aam Aadmi Party slammed the BJP for “shunning the responsibility of managing the affairs of the three Municipal Corporations in Delhi, which it has been ruling since 2007”.
The party alleged that while the BJP leaders are accusing the Delhi Government of non-cooperation, the BJP had tried to rule Delhi by proxy between May last year till the declaration of Assembly election results in February, but it did nothing to contain the financial mismanagement in the civic bodies. Going on the offensive, the party demanded a proper probe into the functioning of the civic bodies ever since they came under the BJP.
“The AAP would like to question the BJP on how many times it met the Central Government or the Lieutenant-Governor during the eight months of the President’s Rule to seek financial assistance for the MCDs. Why were salaries of poor employees pending for three months? The AAP demands that the Delhi Government should immediately order a probe into the functioning of the MCD to fix the rot,” a statement from AAP read.
The MCDs have converted Delhi into a heap of garbage and must pay the price for this criminal negligence. According to figures available in the public domain, the AAP alleged, the three MCDs, on an average, could not even spend 40 per cent of the total allocated budget in 2013 for the developmental works they have been promising.
MCD was subject to a large-scale ghost employees’ scam where 22,853 “fictitious employees” were allegedly paid salaries, which resulted in financial losses of around Rs.100 crore every year, the AAP statement said.
“In order to combat dengue and malaria, a budget of Rs.45.5 crore was sanctioned. But the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) only managed to spend Rs.18.8 crore. An alarming 5,574 cases of dengue and 200 cases of malaria were reported in the Capital. In 2012, Rs.319 crore and in 2013 Rs.455.8 crore were sanctioned by the SDMC to take care of sanitation, and yet the situation of sanitation and cleanliness in South Delhi is regrettable even today,” it said.
The Delhi MCD for its website has been allocated 70 crore and 13 crore have been spent till date. In the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, much like everywhere else in Delhi, a total of Rs.365.8 crore was sanctioned to maintain roads and street lights in East Delhi. However, a lot of the street lights, some even on the main roads, do not work, it said.
“There are large potholes everywhere on the roads. Rs.323.33 crore was the sanctioned budget for sanitation in 2013-2014. But there was not a single day without complaint about garbage not being removed, or about unclean streets or sewage issues,” the party statement said.
The AAP questioned BJP on how many times it had met the Centre to seek financial assistance for the MCDs
