Voting for the seven Lok Sabha seats of the National Capital Territory of Delhi will be held on 25 May.
Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely said his party would bring out a ‘chargesheet’ against BJP MPs for their ‘inaction’ and ‘non-performance’ in the past ten years, as they did not utilise the MPLAD funds for development of the capital as they had vanished from their constituencies after getting elected, necessitating the replacement by their own BJP party of six of the seven sitting MPs from Delhi.
Lovely said that BJP had also replaced the sitting MPs earlier too, as they only made promises without executing any new projects. He said that under Prime Minister’s Rural Development Scheme for the development of villages, MPs were expected to adopt 56 villages, but only 12 were adopted. Each Delhi MP was to adopt and develop five villages till 2024, but according to the data released by Union Ministry of Rural Development, the capital figures at the bottom of the list with “zero percent” development.
Under the “Hissab Do, Jawab Do” campaign, Lovely demanded that BJP MPs provide list of works executed by them with their MPLAD funds, as the reality was that they had vanished from their parliamentary constituencies after being elected to Lok Sabha and did not care for their constituents. He said that Delhi’s toxic air has reduced the life span of every citizen in the capital, and the polluted Yamuna has become an eye sore and a source of despair but BJP MPs are sighted near Yamuna briefly only during the Chhath Puja festival and they did nothing to check pollution.
Lovely said that BJP MPs did not contribute to creating new schools, hospitals, or other infrastructure in the past ten years. Instead, BJP was taking credit for the projects started by the Congress Government, like the expansion of the Metro network, or the construction of the Signature Bridge, as it only delayed these projects resulting in escalation of the construction costs.
Delhi Congress president further said that community kitchens started on government lands by East Delhi MP have been shut down, which was yet another example of BJP’s anti-people policies, and disturbed condition of DTC buses are creating insurmountable problems for commuters.
Former Delhi Minister Haroon Yusuf said that BJP made a habit of replacing their sitting candidates, they did so during MCD elections and now during Lok Sabha polls too. Interestingly, Congress has planned to present the ‘chargesheet’ against BJP MPs but it has yet to be declared its candidates. On the other hand, both BJP and AAP have not only declared their candidates, but they have also started their campaign.
Under the banner of the India bloc, both AAP and Congress are to campaign jointly but they have yet to set up coordination committee for campaigning. AAP claims that delay in the announcement of candidates by Congress is hindering joint campaign process.