The Aam Aadmi Party takes strong exception to reports that the Arvind Kejriwal government’s decision to provide free water to those households using upto 20,000 litres of water per meter every month may be discontinued from April 1.
If these reports are indeed true, it will become clear that the Congress-led UPA’s central government is hell bent on taking a revenge on the people of Delhi for having ousted its corrupt Sheila Dikshit government from power in the capital.
The decision to provide lifeline water to the people was taken in the Delhi Jal Board meeting chaired by Arvind Kejriwal in his capacity as chief minister on December 30, 2013.
The DJB decision cannot be reversed by either the Lieutenant Governor or the central government, since the Board is an autonomous body and any undue interference in its functioning is condemnable.
There is no major financial implication involved in continuing the free water scheme and the DJB has sufficient financial resources to provide this much needed relief to the people with genuine water meter connections. The Board, which has an existing budget of nearly Rs. 4000 cr per year can, without any difficulty, provide 20,000 litres of water per every metered connection for the entire year for merely 160 cr rupees. Therefore, the argument that the AAP government scheme was imposing a financial burden on government resources is misleading and bogus.
The AAP government had ensured that the DJB started the scheme from January 1 itself from its existing resources and there is no reason why this should not be continued beyond April 1. All arguments being given to stop it are unconvincing and appear to be guided by the sole intention of not allowing the people to get relief in their daily lives.
It is shocking to note that despite the hon’ble Lieutenant Governor’s reported statement to continue the public welfare schemes launched by the AAP government, the UPA’s central government is taking anti-people decisions one after the other to impose unreasonable burdens on the people of Delhi.
The Congress and the BJP, which had joined hands to ensure that the AAP government does not have the required numbers in the assembly to introduce the Janlokpal bill, are both responsible for imposition of this anti-people decision on the people, since both these parties kept quiet when Delhi’s interim budget was passed in the parliament.
The AAP will take this issue to the people and will expose the unholy alliance between the Congress and the BJP to reverse the pro-people decisions taken by the AAP government.
Source Link: http://www.aamaadmiparty.org
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