Meenakshi Lekhi and Ajay Maken trade barbs over sealing

NEW DELHI: BJP’s New Delhi candidate and sitting MP Meenakshi Lekhi on Wednesday accused former Union minister and Congress candidate Ajay Maken of doing

“shoddy work”

with the

Delhi Master Plan 2021

leading to the

sealing crisis

in the capital.


Lekhi alleged that as the Union urban development minister, Maken had left several gaps in the plan and never made a genuine attempt to resolve the problem completely.

Maken, however, said he had introduced more than 170 amendments to the plan and if the BJP government thought it was “shoddy”, it should have further amended it to prevent commercial establishments from getting sealed in Delhi.

Lekhi, who had defeated Maken in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, alleged that the plan was approved hurriedly despite having several shortcomings. “Maken is to be blamed for the mess. In the plan, the rules for DDA’s local shopping centres and those for other markets are different. Several roads were not declared commercial.” She also alleged that the AAP government did not appoint a lawyer in the Supreme Court, which is hearing the sealing case.

The BJP leader, herself a Supreme Court lawyer, said the issue of sealing had been pending before the court since 2008. “Had the Congress government been interested, the issue would have been resolved. But they didn’t step in. The sealing is the outcome of carelessness of previous governments.” Lekhi also alleged that sealing was resumed just before the election to make it an issue against BJP.

Maken, however, said BJP had five years to make amendments to the master plan and arrive at a permanent solution to settle the sealing issue. “Our government (UPA) brought a legislation in Parliament within one week of assuming office. We did not let the commercial establishments getting sealed by issuing an ordinance. If there were problems in the plan and the amendments, BJP should have corrected them. Why didn’t the BJP government bring an ordinance to stop sealing?”

The former minister added that the UPA government had notified 3,000 roads as commercial for shops and businesses to function in a legal way but the BJP government could not add even a single street to that list.

Listing her achievements in the past five years, Lekhi said she had got several projects executed with the help of the MP local area development funds (MPLAD). But a lot is still to be done, she added.

“I have spent my money on improvement of New Delhi railway station and construction of open gyms, provided piped water to staff quarters at AIIMS and got libraries built through CSR,” the MP said. “The Centre had allocated Rs 900 crore to Delhi government to improve water supply following my intervention but I have no idea where that amount has been spent.”