New Delhi: Three years ago on February 14, Arvind Kejriwal took oath as the Chief Minister of Delhi after his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept to power with 67 out of 70 seats in the Assembly. Congress, the party which had ruled Delhi for 15 years with Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister, failed to win even a single seat. On Wednesday, AAP celebrated three years since forming government by giving a “report card” of the last three years. Naturally, they compared three years of AAP with 15 years of Congress. Delhi Congress Chief Ajay Maken and former CM Sheila Dikshit, too, compared the progress of the AAP government with that of the Congress. However, the picture of the last two decades painted by both were radically different.
Some believe that the AAP reduced the 2013 and 2015 Delhi Assembly Elections to a referendum on power and water tariffs. Three years later, Kejriwal was quick to point that out. “During the election campaign, when I used to go and meet people, everyone used to say that they were paying too high a power bill. Every year, power tariffs went up. During the last three years, we have actually reduced power tariffs. In 2010, if you consumed 400 units of electricity a month, you paid Rs. 1,340 for it. In 2014, Rs. 2,040. Last year, your bill should have come down to Rs. 1,170. That is one of our biggest achievements,” he said.
Maken, contending Kejriwal’s claims on power, said, “Those who lived in Delhi before 1998 remember all the power cuts. We made sure the city got 24 hour power supply. During our tenure we realised that power theft had gone up to 56%. After we put an end to that, we saved Rs. 30,000 crore which helped the people of Delhi.”
“The year before we formed government, in 2014-15, 11.5 crore units of power were lost to load shedding. Last year, this figure was just 1.5 crore units. Most places in Delhi have 24 hour power supply now,” he added.
Kejriwal also lashed out at Congress for failing the education sector in the city, “We have built 7,030 classrooms and 8,000 classrooms are under construction. This is the equivalent of 300-350 new schools. For perspective, the previous government constructed only 800 classrooms in 15 years. These numbers speak for themselves. We constructed 20 new schools and soon, 28 more will be ready. We made 48 new schools in our tenure, compared to 33 in 15 years.”
Ajay Maken, addressing a press conference hours after Kejriwal’s address, hit back saying, “We created 6 universities, 6 deemed universities, 22 general education colleges, 20 professional education colleges, 5 ITIs, 54 ITCs and 12 Polytechnic institutes.”
Taking the fight to issues of water, Kejriwal spoke of how his government had ensured piped water supply to Delhi’s colonies. “In 15 years, the previous government got piped water supply to only 220 new colonies. In the last 3 years, we have added water pipelines in 383 colonies. In two years, every house in Delhi will get water in a tap.”
On the question of infrastructure development, both AAP and Congress had different figures altogether. Maken said, “We constructed 75 flyovers, 4308 kilometres of roads and multiple bridges over Yamuna including Wazirabad flyover, largest signature bridge in the world.”
Kejriwal, on the other hand, said, “Whenever I ask someone what work the last government did, people say they made a lot of flyovers. Everyone calls them Flyover-waali Sarkar. So let us look at the figures. They made 57 flyovers in 15 years. We made 11 in 3 years. So even if you compare averages, we are at par.”
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