The political faceoff between BJP and AAP has escalated over the issue of rising pollution and deteriorating air quality in Delhi. In a joint conference with party MP Manoj Tiwari, BJP National Spokesperson Sambit Patra accused the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government of committing yet another scam worth crores through the Ministry of Labour and claimed that they did fake registration of 2 lakh labourers.
“The pollution is not only in the air or water of Delhi but the intent and integrity of the AAP, as well as Arvind Kejriwal, are polluted. This is the only reason that the national capital is now polluted with corruption. Excise pollution happened in Delhi just a few days back. After this, a thug named Sukesh Chandrashekhar was duped by the Aam Aadmi Party. Meanwhile, today the biggest corruption among the workers has been revealed,” they said.
‘Ghost registrations of Construction workers’: BJP
Patra termed it the biggest corruption case in India as far as construction workers were concerned. He said three NGOs working for construction workers alleged massive corruption in their registration through proxies. The BJP leader accused the Delhi government of siphoning off money that was meant for the welfare of construction workers and spending it on AAP’s party-related works.
Elaborating on the figures, Patra said, “The board formed under Manish Sisodia has Rs 3,000 crore as the corpus fund for this year. Between 2006 to 2021, over 13 lakh construction workers were registered under the Delhi government’s labour department. Of these, over 9 lakh were registered between 2018 to 2021.”
He further added, “The investigations then revealed 2 lakh fake registrations in Delhi. Around 65,000 workers had the same mobile number while 15,700 had the same residential address in Delhi and the remaining 4,370 had the same permanent address.”
However, none of these workers sharing the same temporary or permanent address is connected to each other, he said.
Hitting out at Kejriwal, BJP leader Manoj Tiwari stated, “The person who can snatch the rights of labourers by making so many luscious promises, there is no doubt he is the biggest enemy of Delhi. Even before this, the Aam Aadmi Party had done a scam of 143 crores from the workers’ funds and used it in the work of the party. The person who can leave his state suffocating in pollution comes just to hold a press conference for 2 hours. He is not worrying about Delhi, he is just on an election tour.”
