BJP attacks Delhi’s AAP govt over financial mismanagement, rising debt

PTI, Jan 4, 2025, 2:10 PM IST

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi dubbed AAP an “aapda (disaster)” for Delhi, the BJP on Saturday said it would highlight daily the crisis the city government had inflicted on different sectors, and began with its alleged financial mismanagement.

BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said Delhi used to be considered one of the better states and Union Territories in terms of its financial health but its budget was now likely to report overall losses under the AAP government.

Delhi had a budget surplus of 1.56 per cent in 2015-16, which has been falling since then and is now headed into the negative, he said.

The city government has also been seeking more and more debt and has now proposed to take a loan of Rs 10,000 crore from the National Small Savings Fund, he claimed.

Trivedi said the grant-in aid by the Centre to Delhi had also risen three times to 1.53 per cent of its GDP and accused former chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal of setting a record in looting and emptying the treasury.

The BJP spokesperson said the city’s revenue collection had seen a steady fall from 5.4 per cent of GDP to 3.9 per cent during AAP’s 10-year rule, adding that the national average stood at 6.27 per cent.

AAP is all about financial irregularities and mismanagement of taxpayers’ contribution, Trivedi alleged, claiming that things were in a bad shape in AAP-ruled Punjab as well.

He noted that AAP claimed to have spent a lot of money in education and health sectors and questioned the output.

If AAP comes to power again, there will be no money left, Trivedi said, adding that the challenge for a BJP government, if elected to power, would be how to repair the damage caused by the Kejriwal-led party’s rule.

He said the central government led by Prime Minister Modi had shown how to provide electricity by creating a framework for solar power for domestic use.

It will also cause no damage to the environment, he added.

He also expressed confidence that voters would take the lead in ridding Delhi of this “aapda”.

Targeting Kejriwal after he questioned the BJP over its face for the Delhi polls, expected next month, Trivedi said what was “amusing and peculiar” was that AAP had a chief minister in Atishi who was not its face for the chief minister’s (CM) post.

People are wise enough to know what AAP’s face is and what its mask is, he said, taking a “super CM” jibe at Kejriwal.

The BJP has not had a chief minister in Delhi since 1998, Trivedi said.

Kejriwal, he added, made claims driven by political experience, noting that the AAP leader had sought pictures of Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi on currency notes during the Gujarat Assembly polls in 2022 and then forgot about it.

People will take out their anger on AAP this time, he said.

Trivedi, who was quizzed about the murder of a journalist in Chhattisgarh, said the state government would put out all the facts transparently and was handling the issue with sensitivity and alacrity.

Three people have been detained in connection with the murder of a 33-year-old journalist whose body was found in a septic tank on a local contractor’s property in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, police said on Saturday.