Delhi govt taking credit for tackling pollution, dengue without doing anything: Javadekar

Union minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday accused the Arvind Kejriwal government of taking credit for pollution mitigation and dengue prevention without doing anything for it. Javadekar released an RTI-based report brought out by BJP-linked think tank Public Policy Research Centre (PPRC) which claimed that the fiscal deficit of the Delhi government has increased by 55 times in the past two years. No immediate reaction was available from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

BJP vice presidents Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Shyam Jaju, and PPRC director Sumeet Bhasin, BJP's Good Governance Cell member Virendra Sachdeva were present at the release of the report on the performance of the AAP government in Delhi. Javadekar alleged the Delhi government failed to fulfill 67 of the 70 promises made by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the run-up to the 2015 Assembly polls. "Uski topi apne sar (claiming credit for others' work) is the style of Arvind Kejriwal. The Centre and the BJP ruled municipal corporations contained pollution and dengue but Kejriwal took credit for it through advertisements," Javadekar said. He asserted that the political scene in Delhi was favourable to the BJP as people liked the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Kejriwal failed to fulfill his promise to regularise unauthorized colonies but Prime Minister Narendra Modi provided ownership rights to residents of these colonies," he asserted. He said it was sad that the government-run by Kejriwal, who was once known as the face of RTI, did not reply to over 900 of 1,200-odd queries made to it for preparing the report.

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'Kejriwal murdered RTI'- Javadekar

"Kejriwal murdered the RTI despite being once a face of the Right to Information campaign," he alleged. The report, titled "Empty Vessels Make More Noise", claimed the Delhi government failed to set up a Jan Lokpal despite it being one of the fundamental aspects of their politics. "Ninety per cent of street children in Delhi are addicted to drugs. Arvind Kejriwal who promised to make Punjab drug free during Assembly polls in the state in 2017 has failed to control the menace in Delhi," blamed the report. In just two years, the Delhi government has burdened the people with the per capita fiscal deficit in 2019 rising by more than 55 times. The revenue estimates of the AAP government drastically dipped in 2016-17 and never recovered, the report claimed.

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