After making tall promises on Saturday morning, while releasing their manifesto, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is now under the scanner as to how they would be able to deliver with a limited planned budget given to the Delhi Government. While the tapped out party claims that everything in the manifesto is intended to be fulfilled within five years, keeping in mind the budget, it seems like a far-fetched dream in several areas.
Meanwhile, political experts believe that most of the party’s agendas — like solving power and water issues, improving education and increasing security of women — demand huge cash flow. “Some of the heavy assurances the party has given in its manifesto are providing free water, cutting down electricity prices by half, making the city WiFi-enabled and setting up lakhs of CCTV cameras in the city.
With 835 MGD of water available in Delhi for consumption, water is brought in from the Munak Canal. While the party has said it would get water from Munak Canal, revive non-functional water plants like Dwarka, Bawana and Okhla, build decentralised water treatment plants, etc, the party has not mentioned how it would allocate the budget for the same,” experts wonder.
Similarly, in the case of power, the party has said that first it would cut prices by half, and then go through with an audit of power companies. After the audit, they have said that the prices of electricity will be reduced.
The party has also said that it will regularise unauthorised colonies within “one year” of coming to power. Before that, as an “immediate measure” it will provide registration rights to the residents of those colonies paving the way for electricity and sewer lines, which seem like distant dreams.
To confer freehold rights to residents of resettlement colonies, the party manifesto proposes a simplified mechanism wherein original allottees will receive ownership of their plots for Rs10,000.