Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday ruled out possibility of any electoral alliance with the Congress in the national Capital and announced that his party will contest all the seven Lok Sabha seats on the issue of full Statehood for Delhi.
Kejriwal launched a scathing attack on the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said the BJP has no intention of giving Delhi full Statehood. Modi needs to explain why he did not fulfill his promises, Kejriwal told the media persons.
Accusing the PM of not fulfilling his promise made in BJP’s 2014 manifesto to grant full Statehood to Delhi, he said his party will take up this issue in the coming days.
“The people of Delhi have made up their mind that the way people of Telangana, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and other States achieved Statehood through relentless struggles, the people of Delhi will follow a similar path for full Statehood and will not rest till they achieve their goal,” he said.
Stating the party’s internal survey, he said the AAP will be winning with huge majority on all seven seats.
Listing four reasons for winning Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, he said the first reason is the Government has done good work in Delhi. Secondly people in Delhi are very eager to see Delhi get full Statehood and they can see that AAP is serious about it, he said.
He said thirdly, according to the party internal survey, 56 per cent of the people believe that the conduct of the BJP in the conflict between India and Pakistan has portrayed the party in a “negative” light.
Listing out the fourth reason, he said, “The Congress did not put the country first and refused to form an alliance. Therefore Hindus were anyway not going to vote for the Congress,” He said according to survey Muslims had some doubts but now even they have come in support of the AAP.
Kejriwal said the Lok Sabha elections are extremely important for the people of Delhi. “The people of Delhi kept voting for different parties in the Lok Sabha elections, but all Central Governments deceived them and people of Delhi during last 70 years got nothing except exploitation and humiliation,” he said
Kejriwal said father of India’s Constitution, Baba Sahib Bhimrao Ambedkar had famously stated that every voter has a single vote and the value of each vote will be equal, irrespective of the State, religion or caste of the voters.
“Today, however, the country is witnessing blatant contempt of the Constitution; the value of voters of Delhi has been reduced to half. People of Delhi have been subject to step-motherly treatment since last 70 years,” he added.
Delhi is the State which gives second highest tax collection to the Central pool. People of Delhi pay close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore in Income Tax, and in return, Delhi gets only a paltry Rs 325 crore, he said.
Kejriwal said for a small State like Goa, which has a population of only 15 lakh, the Centre provides Rs 3,200 crore, Rs 1.5 lakh crore for Uttar Pradesh. For Delhi, which has a population of over two crore, Centre provides a paltry sum of Rs 325 crore each year for the last 20 years.
Had Delhi been a full State, police would have been accountable to the elected Government, he asked.
“We promise that when Delhi will be a full State, women will be able to step out of their homes without fear even in night,” he said.
The ruling party has declared names of candidates on six of the seven seats in Delhi. A senior AAP leader said the name of the seventh candidate for the West Delhi seat would be announced only after BJP and Congress declare the names of their candidates.
