BJP Kalkaji councillor switches over to Cong

RUN-UP TO MCD ELECTIONS

AHEAD OF the MCD elections in the national capital, sitting BJP councillor from Govindpuri Chander Prakash on Tuesday joined the Congress.

Stating that he is “essentially” from the Congress family, and without specifying his reasons for joining the BJP, Prakash said, “I am in agreement with the vision of the Congress and I wish to work for the upliftment of the poor and the downtrodden.”

“When I became a Municipal Councillor from the Govindpuri ward in South Delhi, Subhash Chopra (former MLA from the Kalkaji Assembly constituency) made efforts to start a project to build an in-situ 14-storey flat complex to settle around 3,000 families living in the JJ Clusters. The work on the flats, which began in 2013, should have been completed in three years, but the AAP has not done anything to complete the construction of these flats,” Prakash said.

Prakash is the second councillor to have joined the Congress this year. Stating that the Aam Aadmi Party had “failed to live up to its promises,” sitting AAP councillor Anil Malik had joined the Congress on February 9. Malik has said that “AAP was working against the very people it had been elected by and the hopes with which, he had joined the party two years ago, had been thwarted”.

Prakash’s exit comes after the BJP announced that no sitting councillors would be given ticket to re-contest MCD polls, scheduled to be held on April 23. According to a senior party leader, councillors from other parties are in touch with the Congress leadership and “more councillors can be expected to join the party in the near future.” The Congress is expected to release its first list of candidates by Thursday.

Meanwhile, in a bid to kick off their MCD polls campaign on a larger scale, Union Sports Minister Vijay Goel said the BJP will start meeting voters at RWAS and with morning walkers in parks, gardens and chai shops. “We are ready with all materials that speaks volumes about the failures of AAP. It is a party of uturns, every promise they made, they took a U-turn; every commitment they made, they retracted. We have an elaborate list of MLAS with details of FIR filed against them, including the charges against them,” said Goel.