Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Chief Spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj on Friday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Municipal Corporations has put a massive burden of debts on the citizens of Delhi and it is high time the BJP should hand corporations to the Delhi Government for its better functioning.

Bhardwaj said that BJP-ruled MCD has to take Rs 18,000 crore from the central government and must return Rs 8500 crore to Delhi Government.

He said that the MCDs have sealed Delhi's big markets and illegally taken conversion fees and parking charges but yet shops are sealed, shopkeepers are devastated.

"For the past several months the BJP-ruled MCDs were not paying the salaries of the doctors and nurses. For this inhuman behaviour of the BJP ruled MCD the image of Delhi has been maligned. But during this whole time, the BJP ruled MCD repeatedly blamed the Delhi government for this crisis and also quoted baseless figures against the AAP government,” he said.

The AAP leader further said that to expose the lies of the BJP, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia on Thursday wrote to all the three mayors. Sisodia has noted that as on 1st April 2020, a total of Rs 6,008 Cr loan is outstanding over the three MCDs.

“It is well known that the Central Government provides grants to all the Municipal Corporations of our country. The amount given to Municipal Corporations is calculated based on their population and for every person residing in that city, Rs 488/- per person is given as municipal development funds. In total,  Rs 2,87,636 is given as municipal funds to all the cities of the country except the Delhi MCDs,” he said.

The Central government has granted funds to Ghaziabad and Gurugram from this fund but none to the MCDs in Delhi.

Based on Delhi’s population, this amounts to a total of Rs 18,000 Cr over the last 15 years that should have

been granted by the Centre to the MCDs.

This means that the MCD should return around Rs 8,500 Cr to the Delhi government and should take Rs 15,000 from the Central government. On behalf of the AAP, I want to request the BJP to handover the MCDs to the AAP. We will run the MCDs in surplus as we did it in case of the Delhi government,” he added.

Attacking the BJP leaders, he said "In the last 14 years, all three corporations have ruined some of the popular markets of Delhi at South Ex, Amar Colony, GK 2 etc. “They sealed the shops of these beautiful markets and took crores of money from the shop owners as conversion charges and as parking tax. Despite such massive harassments to the shop owners the BJP-ruled MCDs have not yet allowed those shops to run,” he said.