AAP workers protest outside Delhi BJP office over PWD’s Dhaula Kuan slum-demolition order

NEW DELHI, (PTI): Aam Aadmi Party workers Saturday staged a protest outside the Delhi BJP office, days after the city government directed its Public Works Department to immediately withdraw an order to demolish slums located near Dhaula Kuan.

Police used water cannons to disperse the protestors.

Reacting to the protest, the BJP alleged the AAP leaders were ”politically frustrated” after the ”corrupt governance of the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation” was exposed and that the party was making an issue out of nothing. The PWD had on December 29 issued a notice asking slum dwellers in the Dhaula Kuan area to vacate the land within 15 days.

AAP MLA Somnath Bharti asserted that his party won’t let anybody’s house get demolished. ”What is wrong with the BJP? Why are they acting against the people of Delhi?” AAP leader Aadil Ahmad said the party’s agitation against the demolition order will be taken to the streets near Parliament as well.

”It was in the BJP’s manifesto that all slum dwellers will be given a house at the same place where slums are. But now, they are sending notices to demolish slums,” he said. The Delhi government, in its notice directing the PWD to withdraw the demolition order, said it was ”inhuman” to do so at the peak of winter and without making an alternate arrangement for the residents.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the PWD portfolio, had earlier this week tweeted, ”PWD officials have been ordered to immediately withdraw the order to demolish slums located near Dhaula Kuan.”

”Demolishing the houses of the poor in the cold without providing any alternate housing is not acceptable under any circumstances. The Arvind Kejriwal government will never support a decision to render people homeless,” he had said.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor on Saturday alleged that AAP leaders are ”politically frustrated” since the ”corrupt governance of the Arvind Kejriwal dispensation” was exposed in the last six months.

”In the recent MCD polls, AAP lost all three wards of the Kalkaji assembly constituency where Atishi is MLA. Now to regain lost political ground, she is making false propaganda that the Centre Government is going back on its announcement on ‘Jahan Jhuggi Wahan Makan’ for the Kalkaji slum dwellers,” he said. ”The truth is our MP Ramesh Bidhuri and local councillor Chandramohan have held meetings with the locals Bhumiheen Camp at Govindpuri and allotment of flats to them has started,” he added. (PTI)