MCDs illegally waived licence fee for BJP, alleges AAP

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led municipal corporations of Delhi (MCDs) of illegally waiving the licence fee for contractors who put up advertisement hoardings and billboards, thereby perpetrating financial irregularities to the tune of ₹2,640 crore

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led municipal corporations of Delhi (MCDs) of illegally waiving the licence fee for contractors who put up advertisement hoardings and billboards, thereby perpetrating financial irregularities to the tune of ₹2,640 crore.

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“The MCDs have acted against the law. They have maliciously and illegally waived the entire licence fee for advertisement contractors. The BJP is conspiring with contractors to get free advertisements in return for waiving the licence fee amounting to crores of rupees. The BJP manipulated advertisement contractors to put up hoardings in Delhi for free,” said AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj in a press conference at the party head office in central Delhi.

He further said, “The BJP-ruled MCDs could have earned ₹2,640 crore in advertising revenue, but the BJP is looting that money through corruption. Minutes of the standing committee meeting were illegally changed to cover up BJP’s scam.”

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor dismissed the allegations and said the AAP leaders are frustrated after the exposure of the financial irregularities taking place in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) since 2015, when AAP first came to power.

“Nobody knows where loans amounting to ₹60,000 crore, taken by the DJB in past 7 years, have gone. Similarly they are frustrated because a CBI inquiry has been ordered Into the DTC scam. To save face, AAP leaders are raising baseless allegations against the three MCDs regarding the advertising revenue. Everybody knows that private companies are not spending on ads and advertising contractors are in loss. Trying to correlate that with the party’s political advertising is a concocted theory,” he said. The BJP had earlier alleged irregularities in the Delhi government’s procurement of new buses, which they had termed the “DTC scam”.

Kapoor said Bhardwaj should first tell the people of Delhi who had paid for the hundreds of hoardings put up by AAP leaders, greeting CM Arvind Kejriwal on his birthday.