 "Delhi gets a financial boost, Rare bonhomie between Centre & state govt & MCDs")
From sparing no opportunity to attacking each other, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-ruled Delhi government are now working together on projects to decongest and to cleanse the city, with the three BJP-ruled civic bodies on board.
The Union urban development ministry is giving Rs 3,250 crore, of which Rs 1,500 crore will go to the city government for road-building. The Centre has also pumped Rs 96.7 crore for Swachh Abhiyan. The city government has already launched a 'Swachch Delhi' app, enabling citizens to register complaints from their mobiles, to be addressed by the government in coordination with the civic authorities.
The Delhi Development Authority (DDA, under the Centre's control) gets Rs 1,665 crore and North Delhi Municipal Corporation gets Rs 85 crore for construction.
On Sunday, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal shared the dais with the Centre's urban development miniter, Venkaiah Naidu, at the launch of 'Swachch Delhi Abhiyan' (November 22-30), aimed to clear the capital of garbage and construction waste. A step forward for the capital from the politics between the AAP government and the BJP-ruled civic bodies, resulting in strikes by sanitation staff and piles of garbage.
“It was a rare moment when the central government handed over a cheque for the Swachch Delhi Abhiyan and, on the spot, our government signed the file and handed it over to the civic bodies. We mean business but, unfortunately, the central government has for so long believed in playing politics and sat on our justifiable demands,” said a city government official. He stated that of the Rs 1,500 crore, as much as Rs 962 crore would go for a single project, the completion of the long Barapullah overground road.
However, the persistent problem of the three cash-short municipal bodies does not appear to have been resolved. Even salaries for their staff is uncertain. Under the Swachch Delhi scheme, there now is Rs 34.5 crore for the North Delhi one, Rs 24.6 crore for the East Delhi body, Rs 23.6 crore for the South corporation, Rs 3.3 crore to the Delhi Cantonment Board, Rs 4.9 crore to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, and Rs 70 lakh for the New Delhi Municipal Council.
And, heeding the demand for resolving property tax disputes between DDA and the civic bodies, the Union again opened its purse strings and directed the former to immediately pay Rs 8.7 crore to the north municipal corporation, Rs 6.8 crore to the south one and Rs 3.2 crore to the east corporation.
Said Venkaiah Naidu: “The central government, Delhi government and municipal corporations together launching Swachh Delhi is an affirmative statement of the Team India spirit at work, as desired by the prime minister.” In a far cry from the earlier acrimonious court battles between the two governments, he went on to say “political parties should not look at each other as enemies but only as political adversaries, and should treat each other with mutual regard and respect, working together for nation building”.
In keeping with the spirit, the Delhi CM said: "We may squabble over jurisdiction but people see a garbage pile as failure of the entire administration. Therefore, we should forget our political divisions and work together for a better and cleaner Delhi, cooperating with each other."
