Govt ignoring key issues, water crisis, says opposition

NEW DELHI: The three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and Aam Aadmi Party minister-turned-rebel Kapil Mishra, who are on a counter protest outside the chief minister’s office at Delhi secretariat for the last three days, said they would continue their hunger strike.

Asking the chief minister and his other ministers to resume work, the four accused Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues of neglecting Delhi’s water crisis.The allegation came a day after a local councillor’s brother was shot dead following a dispute over laying a water-pipeline connection in Delhi’s Sangam Vihar.

The area houses one of the country’s largest unauthorised colonies where the government has failed to provide piped water connection to all houses, the BJP leaders said. “Water crisis has reached such a point that people are being murdered in the city. Our chief minister is busy doing dharna. Kejriwal should stop lying to people that bureaucrats are on strike. Officers go for meetings at midnight, budget is prepared and questions in the Delhi assembly are being answered,” leader of opposition in the Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said.

Gupta criticised Kejriwal for not talking about the alleged assault on the chief secretary. “You (Kejriwal) are not even mentioning anything about the assault. You are not trying to speak to officers to remove the fears within them. Will Kejriwal give an assurance that the incident which happened with Prakash won’t be repeated again?”

The four leaders began a hunger strike from Friday, demanding Kejriwal returns to work.