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When the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept to power in Delhi on a landslide verdict a month ago, it decimated all political opposition. Thirty days on, AAP’s “credibility” sheen has waned, its prominent founding members, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, are on the verge of being ousted and a string of sting operations threaten to dent AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal’s image.
Brushing aside all views that the AAP was on a self-destruct mode, Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Friday came out with a list of the AAP government’s “achievements”, saying they had a good experience and the government was working with full confidence.
Kejriwal, who has been in Bengaluru for the past fortnight on health grounds, is slated to return next week. Speaking to reporters, Sisodia said, “The past one month was spent to make reforms in the government system and explore avenues to utilise information technology as much as possible. We also took major decisions in the past month by deducting electricity bill by half and giving free water.”
Sisodia said the AAP government had been working consistently to fulfil the party’s election promises. The government on Friday also announced certain measures to boost women’s security such as deploying marshals in all Delhi Transport Corporation buses in the evening and women security guards in crime prone zones of the city.
The Delhi government had announced a 50 per cent subsidy on monthly power consumption of up to 400 units and 20,000 litres of free water a month to all households, that would cost the exchequer around Rs 1,670 crore annually. On Friday, Sisiodia said the water scheme was being extended to group housing societies as well and sewerage charges have been waived.
Meanwhile Yogendra Yadav who had been ousted from the party’s National Executive recently, today took to Twitter to mark the occasion of AAP government clocking in one months in office. Yadav tweeted, “The manthan in the last few days has produced a good deal of visha; it's time now for amrita. Or so I hope.” Kejriwal close aide Sanjay Singh, also used Twitter to trumpet the AAP achievements.
AAP today stated, that apart from revamping its anti-corruption helpline, it had fast tracked long pending old age pension verifications helping beneficiaries.
The Government will also be bringing out a White Paper on electricity commissioned under former DERC Chief Bijendra Singh.
Sisodia said that the government would allow \"carry forward\" of refund (input tax credit) of VAT adding that stamp vendor license will now be online.
As for the social sector; Sisodia said, the government was keeping a tab on arbitrary fee hike by private schools and had already issued show cause notices to 200 schools, it was installing CCTV cameras in schools and had so far provided licenses to 20,800 e-rickshaws in the one month and was redesigning hospitals to increase their beds-capacity which will increase access of poor to health care.
With pollution being a major cause of concern for the capital Delhi, Sisodia said the government was keeping a tab on pollution checking centers, monitoring waste facilities etc.
He claimed that the government’s heath department has also been on alert and has been monitoring swine flu care facilities.
