The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) manifesto for the Delhi municipal elections lay focus on making the city garbage-free and fighting vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya.
The party’s election manifesto also promised that the process of procuring certificates and licences will be made online, and rules for building plans simplified.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal said the BJP has been backstabbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi by ruining his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
‘Pile of garbage’
“The BJP has made Delhi a pile of garbage. We will tell them how Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is genuinely implemented by clearing these piles in a year and making Delhi garbage-free,” he said.
Senior AAP leaders Manish Sisodia, Alka Lamba, Ashish Talwar, Dilip Pandey, Ashutosh, and Deepak Bajpayee were also present.
Mr. Kejriwal said the BJP took 10 years to make Delhi a garbage dump but his government will take a year to clear it. Quoting the manifesto, he also said landfills in the city would be cleared by 2019.
After their sweeping victory in the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections, the AAP will make its debut in the civic elections this time. The party’s aim is to snatch the throne from the BJP, which has been ruling over the city’s municipal corporations for the last 10 years.
One of the highlights of the manifesto is the house tax waiver that the party has been pitching in its campaigns. Apart from this, the party has also promised to remove conversion fees for mixed land use, construction of state-of-the-art household and public toilets, regularising sanitation workers and payment of their salaries by the seventh of every month.
Building plan approval
The manifesto said approval of building plans will be made easier. They promised that people with plot sizes up to 500 square metre will not need approval for building plans from the civic bodies. Instead, they can get it approved by a registered architect and submit it to the corporation.
The AAP also presented a detailed plan for sanitation workers. “At present, there are 40,000 contractual safai karamcharis in the municipal corporations. The AAP will regularise these contractual workers so they too can get the facilities available for the permanent staff,” the manifesto read.
They will also be provided with protective gear like gloves and masks for picking up trash, a fixed deposit will be set aside for their daughters and their families will be given health insurance cover.
The party manifesto also stressed on involving residents’ welfare associations to enhance citizen participation in governance. “The people will decide about the work to be undertaken in their area,” the party said.
Mr. Kejriwal said most of the tedious processes of the municipalities will be made easy. “It took our government just two years to eradicate touts from the fields of education, health and sanitation. We will prove this efficiency in the municipalities as well,” he said.
