Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday claimed that the scale of development of the Capital’s unauthorised colonies over the last five years had been “the highest in the last 70 years” and lashed out at his political opponents for “doing nothing” for the development of these colonies.
The BJP, he alleged, was indulging in “political and media gimmicks” by providing registration papers to just 100 property owners before the upcoming Delhi Assembly election.
“Being the Capital, Delhi has a huge influx of migrants from all over the country. In the last 30-40 years, Delhi has seen migration of people from other States in large numbers. It has been the responsibility of the DDA to provide affordable housing to the people, but unfortunately, the stipulated demand for housing has not been met,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“This has resulted in the set up of unauthorised colonies in large numbers. The previous governments did nothing to improve the conditions of these colonies,” he said further.
The Chief Minister said that residents demanded the development and regularisation of the colonies but they were only given “false promises”. Since its formation in 2015, he claimed, the AAP government in Delhi had worked extensively for the progress, development, and regularisation of unauthorised colonies.
The Delhi government, he said, had spent ₹8,147 crore on developing unauthorised colonies. He added that during the tenure of the previous government, from 2004-2009, 309 out of a total of 1,797 such colonies had “properly developed” sewage systems and roads and ₹811 crores were spent on the work. From 2015 to 2019, he said, the AAP government constructed sewage systems and roads in 1,281 colonies at an expense of ₹4,312 crore. The number of water pipelines laid in 45 colonies from 2002 to 2009 and in 245 colonies from 2009-2014 were increased to 579 colonies with a total expenditure of ₹391 crore and thus, 1,554 colonies now had such pipelines, he added.
