A day after the Swachh Survekshan 2022 rankings were released, in which none of the three erstwhile corporations managed to score a single point in the garbage-free city category, AAP lashed out at the BJP which governed the three civic bodies till their merger in May this year.
‘BJP misrule’
On Sunday, AAP in-charge of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi Durgesh Pathak said it was a matter of shame that the BJP, which was in power in the three erstwhile municipalities for 15 years, had driven the civic bodies to doom.
He demanded that civic polls be held at the earliest.
“The people of Delhi are tired of seeing garbage and filth on every nook and corner. We demand that MCD elections be held immediately so that AAP can rid the city of the three garbage mountains. We will make Delhi the cleanest city in the whole world,” Mr. Pathak said.
Among the 45 cities surveyed in the cleanliness survey, South civic body was placed at 28, North civic body at 37 and East civic body at 34.
The survey was conducted before they were merged into unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
Mr. Pathak said Delhi is the gateway through which the world looks at India. Despite this, he added, the BJP has ensured that Delhi consistently lags behind the whole country when it comes to cleanliness.
‘CM at fault’
Reacting to Mr. Pathak’s attack, BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor blamed the Delhi government for the civic bodies’ poor show in the survey.
“For the last eight years, Arvind Kejriwal’s government has been in power in Delhi. Could Mr. Pathak tell us what additional resources were provided to the MCD by the Delhi government to keep the city clean?” Mr. Kapoor said.
He added that the Delhi government had, instead of providing additional resources, reduced the sanitation funds of the erstwhile municipalities over the last eight years while also withholding substantial portions of the assistance provided by the Centre.
“It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Delhi lags behind in sanitation rankings due to the Kejriwal government cutting down on MCD’s sanitation funds,” Mr. Kapoor said.
Reacting to the Swachh rankings, a senior MCD official expressed pleasure at seeing the three erstwhile civic bodies improve their rankings. “SDMC has brought the corporation into the top 30. This has happened due to the various initiatives taken by the three corporations till they were merged into one MCD,” the official said.
In the previous, 2021 survey, of 48 cities, this is how the three erstwhile civic bodies were placed — South civic body at 31, East civic body at 40 and North civic body at 45. The cities were ranked based on three parameters, which include service-level progress based on data provided by urban local bodies and certification based on waste management.
