Shah hits out AAP, accuses it of neglecting MCDs; Kejriwal REACTS

Shah, who was inaugurating a waste to energy plant near Tughlaqabad, said that AAP thinks that the people of Delhi will turn against MCD due to lack of funds

As the Capital gears up for another round of municipal elections, union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday targeted the Aam Aadmi Party, asking people to choose if they want to make the city “AAP-nirbhar” (dependent on the AAP) or “Aatmanirbhar” (self-reliant). He blamed ruling AAP government for adopting “second-class behaviour” towards the municipal corporations by withholding funds worth ₹40,000 crore to render them dysfunctional.

Union home minister Amit Shah lighting the ceremonial lamp at the inauguration of MCD's Tehkhand waste-to-energy plant. He was accompanied by Delhi LG Vinai Kumar Saxena, Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta and state assembly leader of opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri. (ANI)

The three MCDs, now merged into one, were all controlled by the BJP.

Shah, who was inaugurating a waste to energy plant near Tughlaqabad, said AAP is hoping that the people of Delhi will turn against MCD , but that the BJP will carry a door-to-door campaign to highlight the treatment meted out to the body by Delhi CM Kejriwal.

n a series of tweets in Hindu, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal responded by stating that Shah was asking for another three years to carry out the work for which has not be undertaken during the last 15 years of BJP rule in MCD. “Why should people trust you? You will not be able to do it. (make Delhi garbage free). Now we will show how Delhi can be made garbage free,” Kejriwal said.

Listing the projects launched by the Central government to improve urban infrastructure in the capital, the home minister said that with the unification of the municipal corporation of Delhi will enable the civic body to make Delhi the best capital in the world. He blamed the Delhi CM  for creating confusion among people. “Kejriwal ji believes that press interviews lead to development ; advertisements can delude the people of country but such delusions cannot go on forever and people eventually face reality. People of Delhi have to decide. Should MCD not get the funds due to it?” Shah asked people gathered for the inaugural ceremony.

Shah posed a rhetorical question on why the three Delhi Municipal Corporations had to be unified, and then went on to answer it. “They were unified because you (Kejriwal) stopped funds of ₹40,000 crore by undertaking a second class behaviour. Was it not the responsibility of Delhi government to provide these funds? Such small minded politics has been carried out by AAP by betraying people. I want to assure people that the Narendra Modi government will not let any work in Delhi halt.”

On October 17, the Union ministry of home affairs notified the delimitation report for carving out 250 municipal wards , taking another step towards holding civic polls which were earlier scheduled to be held in April . Shah on Thursday attempted to project the choice between BJP and AAP as one between the “politics of advertisement” and “politics of development”. “Do people of Delhi like advertisement politics or development politics. Do people like publicity politics or politics of change? The choice is between politics of corruption or politics of transparency.”

The dispute over the allocation of funds for the MCDs stems from Delhi’s unique constitutional position -- a Union Territory with a legislative assembly -- as well as the trifurcation of the MCDs in 2012, and the flow of grants from the Centre to the Delhi government.

While the Delhi government consistently claims that it had paid all dues it owed to the erstwhile three BJP-ruled MCDs, the civic bodies have claimed that the AAP dispensation owned the corporations thousands of crores.

The Delhi government has also claimed that the Centre owes the corporations ₹12,000 crore. The AAPs stand has been that the Centre gives grants to all municipal corporations across the country, based a formula of ₹485 per person of the population, and has claimed that it has not been paying grants to the three MCDs. The AAP’s position is based on the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission’s report, in which the Centre gives a grant of ₹2.87 lakh crore to state governments, of which ₹87,144 crore is meant for municipalities.

However, the BJP and the corporations have maintained that Delhi has never got a share from this fund as it is a Union Territory.

Similarly, the municipal corporations get a share of the tax collections in the form of basic tax assignment (BTA) and global share of taxes announced during the annual budget. The share of municipal corporations is determined based on the recommendations of Delhi Finance Commission (DFC) reports. The MCDs have argued that the budgetary allocation for the corporation has consistently gone down while the BTA share as per DFC recommendations has also been withheld in attempt to financially cripple the civic bodies.

Talking about the waste to energy plant at Tehkhand, the minister said that before 2025, Delhi will have the required infrastructure to process all the waste produced by the city daily so that in future no mountains of garbage are seen in Delhi. He listed waste processing plants which are going to be developed by the municipal corporation including a waste to energy plant in Narela Bawana, a Bio CNG plant in Okhla, three Biogas plants (by March 2023) and eight Material recovery facilities. “I want to assure people that the even before the BJP comes to power once again in MCD through elections, we have carried out planning for making Delhi garbage free,” Shah said.

Delhi generates around 11,000 tons of garbage every day, of which 56.57% is processed while the remaining 43.42% is dumped on the three over-saturated landfill sites at Okhla, Ghazipur and Bhalswa.

The three landfills are operating beyond their capacity and have become source of environmental pollution through landfill fires and groundwater contamination by leachate. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had ordered the three erstwhile municipal corporations to initiate a ₹250 crore project to carry out bio-mining and bio-remediation of the landfills, which had an estimated 280 lakh ton of legacy waste in September 2019. While the original order issued by the NGT stated that legacy waste dumpsites are to be “cleared within one year but substantial progress must be made and demonstrated within six months”, Delhi has seen multiple revisions and extensions of these deadlines. The net progress in terms of waste removal is further slowed down by continued dumping of fresh waste.

However, current lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena has claimed that the process has gained pace over the last four months. On Thursday, during the commissioning of the WtE plant, Saxena said the landfills were being cleared at the rate of 1.41 lakh tons of waste per month over the last three years but over the last 4 months, the monthly average has gone up to 6.52 lakh tons per month, reiterating that the landfills will be cleared in 18 months.

Responding to the allegation of step-motherly treatment, the Delhi CM asked about the funds provided by the central government to MCD. “How much money has been provided to MCD by the central government? Both were led by BJP governments? Double engine government? Do not make excuses for your failure. Tell people what work has been carried out by you in 15 years. In the next MCD elections, people have to decide if they want Koode ki Delhi (garbage Delhi) or clean Delhi,” he tweeted.