In a blistering attack on the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday said its 'jhadu' election symbol should be forfeited for pushing the national Capital into a civic mess.
Addressing public meetings in support of BJP candidates at Mangolpuri, Vikaspuri and Rajender Nagar, Adityanath accused AAP of making the people of Delhi thirst for water and said he sometimes wondered if the party was possessed by the spirit of Aurangzeb.
The firebrand BJP leader also charged AAP of sheltering Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators in Delhi.
The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh connected three crore households with piped water supply but by sheltering the tanker mafia, AAP forced the people of Delhi to thirst for every drop, he alleged. "I sometimes wonder, has Aurangzeb's spirit possessed them that they are forcing the people of Delhi to thirst for water?" Adityanath charged.
"It's the right time to make AAP yearn for every vote as it has made you thirst for every drop of water," the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said during his Rajender Nagar rally.
In Vikaspuri, he said the Yamuna was considered a holy river and people chanted "Har Har Gange, Har Har Yamune" after taking a dip in Mathura-Vridavan, alleging that the AAP government had turned it into a "stinking" drain of filth.
Citing "civic mess" in Delhi, Adityanath said every road was potholed and littered with garbage, sewers overflowed onto the streets, and people hankered for drinking water.
AAP and Kejriwal came to power holding the 'jhadu (broom)' but fooled the people and made the party symbol a synonym for "filth and mess", he claimed.
"AAP's 'jhadu' symbol should be forfeited because it has become a synonym for filth, insanitation and mismanagement," he said. AAP is the first political party in independent India to be an accused in a corruption case and more than a dozen of its leaders went to jail, he added.
Dubbing AAP a "symbol of corruption and anarchy", Adityanath urged the voters to bring a "double-engine government" of the BJP in the February 5 assembly polls.
Addressing a public meeting in support of BJP candidate Raj Kumar Chauhan in Mangolpuri, he also slammed Kejriwal over the "stinking Yamuna" in Delhi. "If you had moral courage, you would have taken a dip in the Yamuna, along with ministers of the AAP government," Adityanath said, referring to a recent dip he had taken at the Sangam in Prayagraj along with his Cabinet, during the ongoing Maha Kumbh.
He also charged that the party spread "anarchy" by "sheltering" Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators in Delhi.
"AAP's public representatives and office-bearers forcefully occupied hundreds of acres of land of the Uttar Pradesh government's irrigation department near Jamia Nagar and settled Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators," he charged.
When the land was not vacated despite repeated warnings, Adityanath said he sent the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and bulldozers and, with the Delhi Police's help, cleared the land.
If Delhi needs the land for any medical facility, academic or convention centre, it will be provided but not a single inch of it will be given to infiltrators, he asserted.
Adityanath alleged that civic amenities and infrastructure had collapsed in Delhi and people from the city were settling in Noida and Ghaziabad -- both in Uttar Pradesh -- for better facilities.