‘BJP readying manifesto but statehood not in it’

NEW DELHI: Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Monday said his party will come out with a Delhi-specific ‘sankalpa patra’ (manifesto) but statehood won’t figure in it.


Granting full statehood to Delhi was one of the promises BJP had made in its 2014 poll manifesto. Tiwari said he has always maintained that the issue should be examined. “The way

AAP

chief Arvind Kejriwal behaves he could not be trusted with full power of Delhi. He sat on dharna outside Rail Bhavan with Republic Day celebrations around the corner (in 2014). How can such a person be trusted?” the actor-turned-politician said. He added that the work on the Delhi manifesto was still going on and the content has not been decided yet.

AAP has been accusing BJP of making full statehood an issue before election but abandoning it afterwards.

Tiwari said BJP’s campaign will revolve around three main issues—AAP’s failure to provide good governance in Delhi, non-implementation of Ayushman Bharat and reservation for economically backward; and BJP-led central government’s effort to decongest the national capital by constructing and giving approval to new highways and Delhi Metro’s phase IV.

“Pollution in Delhi is at dangerous levels but the AAP government did nothing to check it. It failed to build new schools and colleges. Delhi’s sanitation is bad because AAP did not release money for safai karamcharis. Yamuna is still dirty. All these works could have been done without Delhi getting full statehood,” Tiwari said.

“The Kejriwal government has also deprived the poor of the benefits of Ayushman Bharat (free healthcare up to Rs 5 lakh per annum) and 10% reservation for the economically weaker section by not implementing the two important schemes,” said Tiwari, who will be travelling to UP, Bihar and West Bengal and address 34 public meetings in the next few days.

Senior BJP leaders said the party’s working group will meet on Tuesday to finalise its campaign strategy. Delhi BJP general secretary Kuljeet Chahal said the campaign material, slogans and advertisement material will come from the central leadership and the Delhi unit will be entrusted with the responsibility to take it to the people.

“So far we were busy with some important national events. Now, we will focus on the campaign in Delhi. We will soon have the committees to look after the advertisements, campaigns, public meetings and the overall election. Once these committees are in place we will intensify the campaign,” Chahal said.