MCD funds tussle: BJP stages protest, AAP holds padyatra

Gupta said that the protest is to fight for the rights of sanitation workers, doctors, nurses, health workers, teachers.

Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Adesh Gupta, along with mayors of the three municipal corporations and other leaders of the party, on Tuesday staged a protest outside the headquarters of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg demanding the government release Rs 13,000 crores dues of the municipalities.

New Delhi: Delhi BJP President Adesh Gupta with Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri and party councillors stages a 'Satyagrah' protest demanding the release of the due fund of corporations, near APP office in New Delhi. (PTI)

Gupta said that the protest is to fight for the rights of sanitation workers, doctors, nurses, health workers, teachers.

“Delhi CM (Arvind) Kejriwal is sitting on the funds of corporations. He should ask the government officials to immediately release Rs 13,000 crore due funds to the MCDs,” he said.

Jai Prakash, mayor North Delhi Municipal Corporation said that the Delhi government is “wilfully” not releasing the dues to make corporations “financially crippled” so that it could neither do any development work for the citizens nor can pay salaries of employees on time.

“We will continue this fight till the Delhi government releases the funds. The AAP is playing politics by not releasing the funds of the corporations so that they can take advantage of it in the upcoming corporation elections,” Prakash said.

But senior AAP leader Durgesh Pathak said that the BJP-ruled MCD has not placed their claim of Rs 13,000 crores in front of the court, while on the other side the Kejriwal government through an affidavit has clearly mentioned that it has released all requisite funds for civic bodies till December 31.

“A recent court order regarding the clearance of the pending salary of MCD employees has no mention of this imaginary Rs 13,000 crores which the BJP claims that the AAP government has to pay to the MCDs. To defame the Kejriwal government and to divert the attention from the Rs 2,500 crore scam of the MCD, the BJP is lying to people and blaming the government. The BJP must immediately stop such dirty politics and release the salaries of employees,” Pathak said.

Pathak also said that on Tuesday nearly 20,000 AAP volunteers conducted “Padyatra (march)” in all 272 wards against scam of Rs 2500 crore in municipalities.

He said that AAP workers met the people in all 272 wards and told them about the “misappropriation of Rs 2,500 crores” in the BJP-ruled MCD. “We are visiting every house to expose the BJP and its misdeeds in front of the people of Delhi. We told them about how the BJP-ruled MCDs has completely ruined Delhi and how the BJP has made the MCDs bankrupt,” Pathak said.

The Delhi unit of the BJP has refuted allegations of the Rs 2500 crore scam. The north civic body’s mayor Jai Prakash had denied the allegations and called it a diversionary tactics by the AAP instead of paying the dues.