BJP, AAP step up MCD pitch with roadshows
NEW DELHI: The national capital was the stage for heavy duty rallies on Sunday, two weeks before Delhi votes in the December 4 municipal polls, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) kicking off their campaigns.
A host of senior BJP leaders and chief ministers took out rallies and roadshows on Sunday, in a bid to drum up support for the party, which governed the city’s municipal bodies for three straight terms. The party saw campaigns by BJP chief JP Nadda, Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Hardeep Singh Puri, Jitendra Singh and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, as well as his Haryana and Uttarakhand counterparts, Manohar Lal Khattar and Pushkar Singh Dhami.
In turn, AAP chief and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who earlier on Sunday tweeted that the BJP was “going to attack Delhi”, launched his party’s campaign in the race to the Civic Centre with the slogan “Sarkar Kejriwal Ki, Parshad Kejriwal Ka”.
Kejriwal’s rally in central Delhi’s Paharganj also saw former MP and Congress leader Mahabal Mishra join the AAP ahead of the MCD polls. Mishra’s son, Vinay, joined the AAP ahead of the 2020 assembly elections and is the party’s MLA from Dwarka.
Votes in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls will be counted on December 7, bringing an end to a tempestuous few months for the civic body. Elections to the erstwhile three civic bodies were delayed earlier this year after the Centre decided to unify the municipality and redraw the wards.
The AAP, which is hoping to wrest control of the civic body, has labelled the move a delay tactic intent on keeping Delhi’s ruling party from securing victory in the elections. The BJP, however, has said the move was essential civic reform to fix the body’s flagging finances.
On Monday, Nadda alleged that the Delhi government was “steeped in corruption”.
“The people of Delhi are tired of the Kejriwal government. It is a government that is drowned in corruption. The number of people gathered here indicates that BJP will be blessed,” said Nadda during a two-hour roadshow from Hamdard Chowk in south Delhi’s Sangam Vihar. nadda was accompanied by his party’s South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri and party candidates Neeraj Gupta, Savita Devi and Poonam Bhati, who are contesting the polls from wards in Sangam Vihar assembly constituency.at a roadshow in north-east Delhi’s Bhajanpura, Sarma said the country needed a uniform civil code, even as he referred to the murder of Shraddha Walkar, allegedly by her live-in partner Aaftab Amin Poonawala.