AAP launches month-long anti-waste campaign and ‘exposes’ BJP on sanitation issue

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In: Solid waste issue

A day after the State Electoral Commission released the draft ordinance for the demarcation of municipal wards in Delhi for public input, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), anticipating MCD polls, announced on Tuesday that he would launch a month of a ‘Kooda Virodhi Abhiyan’ (anti-waste campaign) in the nation’s capital from September 14 to October 14. He said the party would expose “the BJP’s disastrous mismanagement of garbage in the MCD”.

Giving details of the campaign at a press conference, Gopal Rai, AAP’s state coordinator in Delhi and environment minister, said the AAP would outline the state of the landfills. “The BJP will either have to clean Delhi’s rubbish or pack up and leave Delhi and MCD forever.”

Starting Wednesday, senior AAP MPs will each visit a dump – Kalkaji MLA Atishi will visit Ghazipur dump on September 14, Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj will visit Okhla dump on September 15 and Rajinder Nagar MLA Durgesh Pathak will visit Ghazipur dump. Bhalswa on September 16.

Bhardwaj said: “The garbage situation in Delhi has always been bad but it has worsened significantly over the past six months. MCD has closed countless dhalaos without any action plan and opened private shops at the sites, forcing people to dump trash in the streets and sewers.

Atishi, who was also present at the press conference, said, “Every person in Delhi faces difficulties due to garbage. At the current pace of the BJP-led MCD, these dumps will not be cleaned up even in 200 years. It will take at least 27 years to clean up the landfills, that too only if they stop bringing garbage there. AAP will expose the debacles of the BJP’s 15-year tenure to the people of Delhi. We invite everyone to come see the landfills for themselves.

The party will also organize a trip for the public to the three dumps and show them the “failures of the MCD under BJP rule”, the leaders said.

Rai further alleged, “There is no accountability now. Previously, there were advisers to complain to. Now they have nowhere to go. The Ministry of the Interior unified the three municipal corporations but they did not open any offices.

Also, regarding the draft delimitation report, the AAP said that it is reviewing the results of the delimitation. “The electoral commission has asked for a response in the form of suggestions or objections until October 3. We will provide an answer based on a field report to the EC. We are optimistic that this will help get rid of the baseless delineation made by these (BJP) people,” Rai said.