War intensifies over ‘dirty Delhi’, AAP flays civic bodies

The blame game over Delhi’s poor ranking in the sanitation index intensified with the Aam Aadmi Party taking the BJP-led civic bodies head-on.

The blame game over Delhi’s poor ranking in the sanitation index intensified with the Aam Aadmi Party taking the BJP-led civic bodies head-on.

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The party took to the micro-blogging site Twitter and posted a series of tweets, pointing out the responsibility of the three municipal corporations in ensuring cleanliness in the city.

In the Swachh Bharat rankings, made public by the ministry of urban development on Saturday, Delhi was at the 398 position among 476 cities surveyed in the past year. The capital saw three major strikes by sanitation workers during the period and civic agencies have been struggling under an acute financial crunch.

The AAP cited a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to substantiate its allegation that the BJP was to be blamed for the unhygienic conditions in the city.

“AAP would like to ask BJP : Who will take responsibility for this sorry state of affairs of the MCD?” a post on the party’s twitter handle read.

“The latest CAG report had pointed several irregularities in MCD’s basic work of garbage collection, disposal and lack of toilets,” read another post.

The party’s attack came a day after the civic bodies blamed the Delhi government for not providing enough money to run the operations smoothly and thereby city getting a poor rank in the most clean cities.

Senior municipal councillors, however, rubbished the AAP’s allegations, blaming the Delhi government’s “politics” for the situation.

“Has anywhere else in the country you have seen a system in which the state government and the municipal corporations fight over allocation of funds? On one hand they are arm-twisting us by not providing us funds and on the other, they are trying to malign our image,” said Ashish Sood, leader of House in South Delhi Municipal Corporation.