NEW DELHI: All major political parties have started weaving their campaign for the Delhi Assembly polls around issues like air pollution and deterioration of water quality. The Delhi polls are likely to take place between January and February next year.
On the issue of deterioration in air quality, the Congress has been attacking both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre for turning the national capital from the “greenest” to the “most polluted” city in the past five years. Addressing a press conference, former Delhi Congress president and Transport Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely alleged that the air pollution crisis in the city was due to the inability of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal government to boost public transport buses.
On the other hand, both AAP and BJP are trading charges over pollution in the city. While BJP MPs in Parliament slammed Kejriwal for not doing enough to curb pollution in Delhi, AAP, too, attacked the BJP for lack of seriousness on the issue as three BJP MPs from Delhi missed the debate on air pollution in Parliament.
BJP sources told The Sunday Guardian that pollution and environment have been priority issues for the Central government and the party will focus its campaign around various government schemes to curb pollution, apart from exposing the lies of the Kejriwal government.
“The Kejriwal government has miserably failed to provide basic necessities like clean air and water to the residents of Delhi. So, our campaign will surely be based on these issues, apart from the works done by the Central government for Delhi residents,” a BJP source said.
Similarly, the deteriorating quality of water in Delhi is snowballing into a major issue for the ruling AAP and Opposition parties. The row over water quality deterioration broke out when the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) released its second phase of study which stated that Delhi, along with Kolkata and Chennai, failed in almost 10 out of 11 quality parameters of drinking water. The study has sparked a political row, with the BJP and Congress accusing the Kejriwal government of supplying “unsafe” drinking water to residents. Following this, posters have been seen in parts of Delhi blaming AAP for forcing people to drink “poisonous” water.
Posting a picture of one such poster, Health Minister and Chandni Chowk MP Harsh Vardhan also tweeted, “Arvind Kejriwal is giving poison to the people of Delhi in the name of free water supply. Delhi water was found to be the most poisonous in a survey of 20 cities. The AAP government is making tall claims of development, but has failed to even provide safe drinking water to the people.”
Congress, on the other hand, protested outside the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) pumping station at Turkman Gate against contaminated water being supplied by the Board, which is headed by Kejriwal. In a protest, Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra demanded that a criminal case be registered against Kejriwal as the AAP government is playing with the lives of Delhiites.
Senior Congress leader and All India Congress Committee (AICC) member Dr Naresh Kumar told The Sunday Guardian, “The AAP government is a failure in terms of solving real issues. It has not fulfilled any of its promises made in its manifesto in 2015. Except wooing voters by providing freebies, AAP has completely failed in providing basic necessities such as clean air and water. But the Congress will focus on the failures of AAP government. We believe that the voters in Delhi are smart and would understand which party would actually address the real issues faced by the people.”
Kejriwal has slammed the study of BIS as “misleading” and politically motivated. Questioning the credibility of the sources of water samples collected from Delhi, Kejriwal urged the Central government to recollect the samples with the representatives of DJB in the presence of the media. On Friday in a press conference, he also asked Delhiites to lodge complaints if anyone is getting sick due to contaminated water, so that the issue can be addressed soon.
AAP MLA Sukhvir Singh Dalal told The Sunday Guardian that AAP is going to focus on a positive campaign on successes and achievement of five years of the party led by Kejriwal.
“Unlike those who are bashing our party, we have many success stories from free water, subsidies on electricity, to works we have done for education. We will not resort to any sort of anti-campaign against anyone,” Dalal added.