The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been mocking the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) proposal to abolish house tax if voted to power in the upcoming municipal polls, had included the same promise in its manifesto before the 2007 polls, the AAP has alleged.
However, no steps were taken to implement the idea in its 10 years of governance, said the AAP on Sunday.
AAP Delhi convener Dilip Pandey said point number nine of BJP’s municipal poll manifesto in 2007 had promised to abolish house tax in Delhi. “The BJP made the same promise 10 years ago. Instead of abolishing house tax, the BJP let touts after the people of Delhi who take bribes at every step of tax filing,” he added.
‘Practice of bribery’
According to Mr. Pandey, these “middlemen, who operate for the BJP, had made things difficult for Delhi. They go to people’s houses and threaten them in the name of filing taxes”.
“When the AAP is trying to abolish this practice of bribery, the BJP is giving excuses of non-provision in the MCD Act,” he said.
A copy of the BJP’s 2007 manifesto, which was presented before the media on Sunday, read, “House tax in all of Delhi’s villages and urban villages will be abolished.” The Hindu could not verify the authenticity of this document.
AAP Delhi spokesperson Harish Awasthi said the BJP had kept Delhiites in the dark and was now trying to mislead them.
‘Delhi in the dark’
“In Delhi, around 50 lakh properties are registered as eligible for house tax collection. However, tax is collected from only 11 lakh properties. Either the Congress and BJP heads in the municipalities are useless, or they are pocketing the tax from the remaining 39 lakh properties,” Mr. Awasthi said.
