The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) decision to junk all its sitting 153 councillors in the upcoming Delhi municipal elections has vindicated the “corruption in the corporation.”
On March 14, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari announced that the party it will not give tickets to any sitting councilors and will field all new faces in the elections to be held on 22 April. Addressing a Press conference at the party headquarters, AAP Delhi convenor Dilip Pandey alleged that in a bid to beat the “corruption charges” against the BJP councillors, “the party was compelled to drop all their sitting councillors from the ticket list”.
“The move to replace all the sitting councillors is an admission that in the past 10 years, all the three corporations have become a hub of corruption by looting the people of Delhi,” Pandey said.
“The only reason could be that the BJP feared defeat and accepted that their outgoing councillors were corrupt and had made the lives of Delhi’s citizens a living hell,” he added.
However, Pandey claimed that the new tactics by the BJP is not going to save the party from the clutches of defeat.
“Bringing in new faces is not going to absolve the BJP of their corrupt practices. They are only breeding a new crop of corrupt politicians,” he said. Accusing, the BJP for turning the corporation into centre of corruption, Pandey said, “if there will be the list of world’s most corrupt institutions the BJP-ruled MCD will be on top.” However, Pandey declined that the AAP is also reconsidering to change its candidates after the poor performance in Punjab elections.
The BJP has 153 councillors in three municipal corporations with ward strength of 272. The party has been governing the corporations for the past 10 years.