Delhi Congress on Friday promised to build Chhath Puja ghats, like the ones built in the ‘Maha Kumbh’, on the Yamuna banks, which will be declared a separate district and named after the iconic singer and Padma Bhushan Sharda Sinha, who passed away recently.

“Congress has taken a pledge to make Chhath Puja like the ‘Maha Kumbh’ when it returns to power, and will build a separate Chhath Ghat at the Yamuna banks, which will be declared as a separate district and named as “Sharada Sinha Ghat”,” Bihar Congress President Akhilesh Prasad Singh said addressing a press conference.

He added that people from Poorvanchal have played a major role in the development of Delhi. “However, their contributions have been forgotten by the AAP and the BJP. Both of them used them as a vote bank to be insulted and humiliated after winning elections,” Singh said.

The Congress MP said the Kejriwal government ignored the Poorvanchalis during the COVID-19 pandemic and forced them to trek back home risking their lives, which was inhuman and degrading.

“BJP and AAP deeply hurt the sentiments of Poorvanchalis by preventing them from holding their most important religious festival, Chhath Puja, at the Yamuna river banks, as it was highly polluted and the High Court had put a ban on holding the festival in the polluted water. The AAP government took no step to clean up the toxic river,” he said.

The Congress leader alleged that BJP President J P Nadda, whose father graduated from the Patna University, had equated Poorvanchalis in Parliament with Rohingya and Bangladeshi illegal immigrants while Kejriwal said Poorvanchalis were adding fake votes in Delhi.

“A majority of people living in the 1,797 unauthorised colonies in the capital are Poorvanchalis, who live in inhuman conditions without even basic civic facilities, like sanitation, potable water, roads, but neither Kejriwal nor BJP showed any interest in saving them from inhuman living conditions,” he claimed.