AAP, BJP spar over waterlogging and desilting audit
AAP's Delhi president Saurabh Bharadwaj questioned the fate of crores of rupees spent by various agencies on the desilting of drains and asked if Delhi govt conducted a third-party audit, as mandated by Delhi High Court.
BJP said the responsibility of the audit lay with the previous AAP govt, as it was ordered by the HC in April 2024, and the report was to be submitted by June 30 last year.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Bharadwaj claimed that Tuesday's rainfall was "ordinary", yet several arterial roads, including ITO, Zakhira, Sadar Bazar and various stretches in Lutyens' Delhi, were inundated.
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"Crores of rupees were spent on the desilting of drains by MCD, the irrigation and flood control department, PWD, DDA and NDMC.
Despite that, Delhi drowned. This directly points to massive corruption in the name of desilting," Bharadwaj alleged.
He added that BJP govt was entirely focused on Minto Bridge, which resulted in waterlogging in Connaught Place. "An investigation must be launched into why Connaught Place was flooded. Those who were awarded hundreds of crores worth of desilting contracts must be investigated," Bharadwaj said.
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The AAP functionary also said the order to conduct the third-party audit into the desilting of drains was issued on April 8, 2024, and called on chief minister Rekha Gupta to make the report public.
AAP councillors also gheraoed the office of mayor Raja Iqbal Singh at Civic Centre, charging that MCD failed to control waterlogging in the city.
The AAP's leader of opposition in the MCD house, Ankush Narang, wrote to Singh demanding immediate action.
Narang alleged that waterlogging was a reflection of "gross negligence and administrative failure" of BJP-led MCD.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva stated that Kejriwal govt was supposed to conduct a third-party audit of the desilting of drains to make the report public by June 30, 2024, which it "failed" to do.
"Delhi witnessed the loss of nearly 40 innocent lives in 2024 due to waterlogging, and even after the high court's directive, Kejriwal govt did not conduct the third-party desilting audit.
This clearly shows that for the past 10 years, Kejriwal govt was involved in a scam under the guise of desilting," Sachdeva said. "Being a minister in that very govt, Bharadwaj must answer why the audit report was not made public by June 30, 2024," he added.
Sachdeva said Bharadwaj must explain why no action was taken against the "guilty leaders and officials" responsible for the deaths caused by waterlogging in 2024.
BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor accused Bharadwaj of posting "false and misleading" statements on social media by claiming that Minto Bridge was closed due to waterlogging, but the traffic was running smoothly on the stretch.
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