‘Could not fulfil three promises’: Kejriwal admits, Congress hits back
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New Delhi: Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said AAP government failed to fulfill three promises that his party had made earlier.
In his stump speech in Delhi’s Laxmi Bai Nagar Kejriwal assured that the AAP government is working to complete those promises.
Claiming to be truthful to his promises, the AAP chief said that ‘I could not fulfil three promises - first - cleaning the Yamuna river, second - providing clean drinking water 24 hours a day and third - making Delhi's roads of European standards.’
Kejriwal promised in 2023 to have Yamuna River cleaned and take a dip in the water, before the 2025 Delhi Assembly polls.
The AAP chief told the gathering that about ten days earlier he opened a 24-hour drinking water supply in a colony of Rajendra Nagar, adding ‘Now we will do it for all areas of Delhi’.
He assured that he would fulfil these promises over the next five years.
Sandeep Dikshit, the congress candidate taking on Kejriwal, accused former Delhi chief minister of ‘solely responsible’ for the national capital’s toxic air and pollution in Yamuna.
Dikshit , son of Delhi's former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, said that during previous Congress regime the air and Yamuna were better.
Dikshit termed the part of Yamuna from Palla coursing through Delhi ‘ most polluted stretch’ in the world because of ‘untreated human and other wastes’.
‘The Kejriwal government had not bothered to set up sewage treatment plants, though he had boasted in 2023 that he would clean up the river so well that he would take a dip in it by 2025, he was quoted as saying.
Linking Delhi’s air pollution to increase in vehicle population, he said: Stubble burning has existed for decades, but the main cause of Delhi's air pollution is the sharp spike in the number of vehicles on the roads, the lack of a robust public transport system, and severe erosion of the green cover.’
Dikshit said that number of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses came down from 5,500 in 2013 to now around 3,000.