On Wednesday, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) meeting witnessed a heated exchange between Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and the BJP leaders as the former accused the latter of turning the meeting into a ‘political battlefield’. The CM then adjourned the meeting and attempted to ‘run away’ from answering the questions posed by the BJP members.
This is after the BJP members during the meeting raised the issue of CM Kejriwal engaging in ‘political tourism and alliances’ at a time when the nation’s capital was witnessing devastating floods.
Notably, the video of the ruckus went viral over social media in which CM Kejriwal could be seen having no answers to questions put forth by the BJP members during the meeting. Later the CM who was chairing the meeting in the absence of Union minister and New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi, adjourned the session for Thursday without any discussion on the other listed matters.
Arvind Kejriwal exposed in NDMC meeting. pic.twitter.com/1sr6cniqzu
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) July 26, 2023
According to a representative of the NDMC, Kejriwal presides over council meetings when Lekhi is absent. When neither is present, the sessions are presided over by NDMC Chairman Amit Yadav, a national government-appointed bureaucrat.
The BJP council members charged Kejriwal with continuing to engage in “political tourism” while the city was under water at the beginning of the meeting on Wednesday. Satish Upadhyay, the vice chairman of the NDMC and a prominent member of the BJP, stated that party members spoke out about the difficulties that New Delhi residents were having amid the rains and ensuing flooding in the second week of July.
“Members raised concerns over the delay in holding the apex meeting on flood control in Delhi, which played a significant role in worsening the rain and flood situation across Delhi as well as the New Delhi area. Timely desilting of drainage systems was not done, which increased the problems of floods in various areas of NDMC, and the overflow of sewers in MCD areas resulted in backwater flooding the New Delhi area, causing further hardship to the citizens of the New Delhi area. VIP areas like Connaught Place, Bharti Nagar, Golf Link, Lodhi Road were also highly affected due to this mismanagement,” he said.
Also, BJP Council member Kuljeet Singh Chahal criticized AAP saying that Kejriwal was busy attending alliance meetings with other political parties in Patna and Bengaluru at a time when Delhi was flooded. “NDMC organised more than 70 suvidha camps in its area, but Kejriwal, as the area’s representative, has not participated in any camp,” he could be heard saying.
The AAP meanwhile refuted to the allegations and blamed the BJP for not allowing Kejriwal to conduct the session. In the video that has been going viral on social media, Kejriwal can been seen keeping mum while asked by BJP members to answer and later the CM adjourned the meeting.
Kejriwal walked away in May, 2023 too after he was questioned about renovation at CM’s residence
Well, this is not the first time when Kejriwal has opted to keep shut and ‘run away’ from the questions posed by the BJP. Earlier in May this year, Kejriwal walked out of a New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) meeting after BJP leaders raised the issue of the renovation of his official residence at the expense of taxpayers’ money.
BJP leader and NDMC member Kuljeet Singh Chahal raised the issue of the alleged irregularities during the renovation of Kejriwal’s Flagstaff Road bungalow as he narrated the story of a ‘Dhongi Raja’. Chahal apparently referred to CM Kejriwal as a Dhongi Raja and went on to talk about the expenditure on the renovation of Kejriwal’s official residence as he said that the money used in renovating Kejriwal’s residence was taken from Delhi’s exchequer. He added that marble worth Rs 6 crore was used in Kejriwal’s residence.
Calling Kejriwal ‘dhongi’ and ‘chor’, Chahal asserted that Kejriwal will have to give an account of the public’s money squandered for his personal comfort.
Chahal had started narrating the story of “Dhongi Raja” in CM Arvind Kejriwal’s style. If one recalls, in April, Arvind Kejriwal had targeted PM Modi without naming him, by narrating a story about a less educated King in the Delhi Assembly. Chahal took a cue from the CM and narrated a similar story in his style about a Dhongi Raja.
“He (Kejriwal) used to say that I will not take a big bungalow, big car or jeep, but has spent every penny of the hard-earned money of the people of Delhi in revamping his house” Chahal said.
Kejriwal walked away in 2022 also after he was questioned about funds used for school development
Also, in September 2022, Kejriwal was seen running away from a New Delhi Municipal Corporation meeting after Bharatiya Janata Party’s New Delhi General Secretary and NDMC member Kuljeet Singh Chahal confronted him over the AAP government’s claims about school development. Chahal cited an RTI query where multiple questions were asked, and one of them was if Kejriwal utilized funds from his MLA quota for development in NDMC schools.
Chahal raised questions over the claims made by CM Kejriwal and the Delhi government about the development of the Schools. Chahal cited the RTI during the meeting and questioned Kejriwal over his inactions towards the development of the schools.
Instead of answering Chahal, Kejriwal got irked and left the meeting in a hasty manner. The video of the meeting had gone viral on social media platforms back then too.
