Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra and several other leaders of the party were detained by the police on Sunday during a protest at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence against the alarming levels of air pollution in the national Capital.
The protesters were detained after they attempted to sit on a dharna outside Kejriwal's Civil Lines residence. Besides Chopra, former Delhi Congress president JP Agarwal, party spoke person Jitender Kochar and other senior leaders were detained and taken to the Civil Lines police station. Around 40 protesters were detained and released subsequently, a Delhi Police officer said.
"People are facing severe air pollution due to the inaction and failure of the AAP government in Delhi and the BJP-ruled Centre as well as the city's municipal corporations," Chopra said during the demonstration. Chopra said that Delhi has become a virtual "gas chamber" and people now dread to come out of their homes due to air pollution.
He said that hospitals in Delhi have witnessed the number of lung and respiratory cases going up exponentially in the last couple of weeks, as the AAP Government has not taken any step to stem the tide of pollution levels soaring high.
" Kejriwal Government shown the same sort of enthusiasm in implementing the odd-even scheme for controlling air pollution in Delhi in the last five years, then people in Delhi would have breathed clean air," he added.
Former MP Jai Prakash Agarwal said that the fact that the Delhi Govt is once again resorting to the odd-even scheme proves that vehicular pollution was a major contributing factor in fowling the air quality in Delhi.
Ajay Maken accused the AAP and the BJP of indulging in shadow boxing instead of taking some concrete steps to combat alarming pollution. Maken said that Kejriwal was trying to gain cheap political mileage by blaming neighbouring states for the spike in air pollution in Delhi.