After staging an overnight sit-in protest at the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officer here, BJP leader Vijay Goel on Wednesday demanded that the agency’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) be sacked “immediately” if he failed to address the issues of contaminated water and alleged water mismanagement in the Capital.
Alleging that the residents seemed to have “lost all hopes” for redressal of their grievances from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Mr. Goel warned of gheraoing other officials of the DJB if they continued to “indulge in corruption and negligence”.
Party MLA Om Prakash Sharma, general secretary Ravindra Gupta, DJB member Jai Prakash and several BJP members had protested at the DJB’s office till 3 a.m. following which the police arrived at the scene around 3.30 a.m., and allegedly cleared the premises of BJP workers and escorted the DJB CEO out of his office.
The BJP delegation put forth six demands, including the constitution of a task force to address the issue of contaminated water immediately, uploading public complaints on the DJB website, waiving off bills of consumers not receiving water or those receiving contaminated water, strict action against the “tanker mafia”, the release of a summer action plan and the provision of water connections in every household in jhuggi-jhopri colonies.
“The Kejriwal government has ruined Delhi. It does not care for the people and is merely fooling the public with free water, free power, free medicines, and free metro rides. It is a matter of disgrace that the residents of the Capital are unable to get amenities as basic as water,” he alleged.
“Thousands of people in south Delhi neighbourhoods are forced to buy water for domestic chores because utility engineers are unable to fix leakages. Some media reports inform about the rising number of calls being received by the Delhi police from across Delhi on fights breaking out owing to water paucity,” he added.
