Height of landfills rose with increase in MCD corruption, says Manish Sisodia

Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) partook in corruption during its 15-year reign at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and extorted common people for money.

With the Delhi municipal election, scheduled on December 4, a little over a week away, all parties, including the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have intensified their campaign via several public outreach events held on Sunday.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia during door to door election campaign for MCD election at Vinod Nagar in New Delhi. (Ajay Aggarwal/HT Photo)

During one such meeting in Samaypur Badli assembly constituency, AAP senior leader and Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) partook in corruption during its 15-year reign at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and extorted common people for money.

“People living around Bhalswa garbage mountain should take selfies with it as all the mountains of garbage will disappear from the Capital after December 7 (the day election results will be declared); CM Arvind Kejriwal will ensure this. BJP did not clean Delhi’s garbage but minted lakhs of rupees as extortion from the common public. The garbage mountain in Bhalswa is a mountain of BJP’s failure in the past 15 years in MCD. The height of this mountain of garbage rose parallelly with the rise in corruption of the BJP in MCD . But now the public needs to relax and take a selfie with this garbage mountain because after December 7 the Kejriwal government is coming to MCD and all garbage mountains will disappear from Delhi,” Sisodia said.

He added, “Arvind Kejriwal is an engineer himself. He has made a complete plan to eliminate these mountains of garbage from Delhi. This time the people will vote AAP into power in MCD too, and immediately after the formation of the government, the work of eliminating these mountains of garbage will begin.”

He alleged that BJP-led MCD had extorted traders for money over the last 15 years. “The BJP has crossed all the limits of corruption in the past 15 years. They extorted traders for money and made it difficult for them to run businesses. When a common man starts building his house, BJP people reach there and collect lakhs of money in the name of lenter (concrete roof) from him. When a common man opens a shop, BJP people come there to collect money even before the customers arrive. Overall, the BJP did not fulfil its core responsibility of cleaning Delhi and failed terribly,” said Sisodia.

Sisodia claimed the BJP was scared of losing both the MCD and Gujarat elections. “The BJP’s fear of the AAP continues to grow as the Gujarat and MCD elections are coming closer. JP Nadda should keep the last two assembly elections of Delhi in mind. The people of Delhi have given two chances to Arvind Kejriwal on the basis of good governance,” Sisodia said, claiming that since there is angst among the people against BJP’s misrule and love towards the AAP.

Sisodia held also public meetings in Jahangirpuri, Swaroop Nagar, Bakhtawarpur, Alipore, and Narela.

Meanwhile, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha also held a series of public outreach events and said he was confident that AAP would form the government at the MCD next month with a brute majority of “230 out of 250 municipal seats (wards)”.

Chadha attacked the BJP for levelling corruption charges against AAP’s Sisodia. “Over the last six months, the BJP leaders went all around Delhi and abused Manish Sisodia and said that he was corrupt. But finally, when it was time to file a charge sheet in the excise policy case by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate, the agencies had no evidence to even include his name. These agencies have basically said that there was no corruption in the case and have effectively given a clean chit to Manish Sisodia,” Chadha said, seeking an apology from the BJP leadership.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor, however, said that the CBI and ED have filed provisional charge sheets and not given clean chits to Sisodia, so AAP leaders should “stop celebrating”. “The scams of the AAP government have come out and the misuse of the power by Arvind Kejriwal to protect a corrupt minister has also been exposed. AAP is unable to answer the people on all the scam charges, so they are levelling charges of incompetence on the BJP’s rule in the MCD. BJP has done a lot of work in the past 15 years and people want to give the BJP another opportunity to serve them in the MCD,” said Kapoor.