Maken hopes to ride home on traders’ ire

NEW DELHI: Former Union minister and Congress candidate from New Delhi, Ajay Maken, on Thursday said the electorate of his constituency were adversely affected by wrong policies of the government and their faulty implementation leading to widespread discontentment.

Speaking to TOI, Maken said sealing of commercial establishments, faulty implementation of GST and anomalies in the Seventh Pay Commission were problems being faced by government servants and the trading community, who dominate his constituency. “The Seventh Pay Commission recommendations include some draconian provisions. It says there will be no further pay commissions. Also, there is a recommendation to remove all allowances,” he added.

Maken said when he was an MP, he had raised the issue of the Sixth Pay Commission and even sat on a dharna against his own government to ensure its formation in 2005. “The report came in 2007 and was implemented in 2008 with retrospective effect. The UPA government came up with the best pay commission (sixth) recommendations. We increased salaries by 40%, while the increment given in the Seventh Pay commission was just 14%. We will remove these anomalies after getting back in power,” he added.

According to an estimate, 35% of the total voters in New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency are government servants living in areas such as Gole Market, Sarojini Nagar, Sewa Nagar, Lodhi Road and RK Puram.

Similarly, the business class dominates a large number of residential areas such as Greater Kailash, Malviya Nagar, Hauz Khas, Green Park, Karol Bagh, Patel Nagar and Rajendra Nagar comprising more than 40% voters. For this section, GST and sealing of commercial establishments are huge issues.

“The Congress government brought a special Act to prevent sealing in the national capital and made 170 amendments in Delhi Master Plan 2021. This saved lakhs of commercial establishments from sealing. We notified 3,000 roads for commercial and mixed land use. Twenty-two areas such as Basai Darapur and Hastasal, where the concentration of industrial units was more than 70%, were declared industrial,” said Maken, who was urban development minister in the UPA government.

Though he lost the last two elections — the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from New Delhi and the 2015 assembly elections from Sadar Bazar — Maken said he was confident of winning this time around.

“Before the last two defeats, I had never lost a re-election and always registered victories with bigger margins than the previous election. The 2014 and 2015 elections were aberrations. This was the time when the Anna agitation and December 16 gang rape occurred. There was anger against Congress, which translated into wins for BJP in 2014 and AAP in 2015,” said Maken.

One of the most vocal voices in favour of an alliance with AAP, Maken said the two parties together could have easily defeated BJP. “Even now we will be able to win all seven seats. However, we will have to work harder and the winning margin may not be as huge as thought earlier,” he added.

Maken said that AAP’s statehood issue was not gathering much resonance among voters and it is going to be a direct fight between Congress and BJP. “People have understood that with 2-3 MPs, AAP won’t be able to do much in Parliament,” he added.