Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) welcomed the statement allegedly made by South Corporation’s mayor Anamika regarding making the corporation self-reliant. Party senior leader and MCD in-charge Durgesh Pathak on Saturday said that for the first time in the last 14 years, a BJP leader has spoken about making the municipal corporation self-reliant.
Pathak said that the AAP leaders would like to train BJP leaders and their MCD officials on how corruption can be minimised, how the Govt is run and how the budget is raised. He said that the Arvind Kejriwal Govt while working sincerely doubled its budget in the last five years.“The Govt of Delhi had a budget of about 28,000 Cr in 2015 which has increased to about 60,000 Cr in 2020. At the same time, MCD had a budget of about 10,000 Cr in 2015 which increased to Rs 11,340 Cr in 2020, it has been able to increase only 1340 Cr in five years.
Pathak said that for the first time any BJP leader of the MCD has accepted the fact that the people of Delhi have given the responsibility of running the municipal corporations to the BJP.
“South MCD mayor Anamika Ji yesterday told the media the MCDs will not need any help from the Arvind Kejriwal Government and she wants to make MCDs self-reliant. The AAP welcomes this decision,” he said.
The AAP leader further said that when the Arvind Kejriwal Government was formed in 2015 then the budget of the Delhi Government was around Rs 28,000 crore but after the relentless works of the AAP ministers, MLAs and officers now the budget has doubled.
“The budget of the Delhi Government has now become Rs 60,000 Cr. This happened without putting any tax burden to the citizens. In MCD the budget was of Rs 10,000 Cr in 2015 and now it has become just Rs 11,340 Cr that means the BJP has just increased Rs 1,340 Cr in budget in the last five years,” he said.
“If the Bharatiya Janata Party wants then the Aam Aadmi Party can give training to the officials and the councillors regarding how to work honestly and improve the developmental work. We want to help the BJP in making the MCDs self-reliant and if they want to learn from the AAP, we are ready to help and give training as and when it’s needed,” he said.
Pathak further said that for the last several months, the employees of the municipal corporation have not received their salary, because of which they are sitting on a dharna outside the Civic Center.
“The AAP is fully standing with the employees of the corporation and in this context all the corporators of the party will take out a silent padayatra from Rajghat on Monday. This padyatra will start from Rajghat to Civic Center and all our corporators will also stage a dharna along with the employees who are protesting at the civic center,” he added.