Manoj Tiwari hits back as AAP ‘fails’ him in report card

NEW DELHI: Claiming that North East Delhi

MP

and Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari had failed on all fronts as the area’s representative in the

Lok Sabha

, Aam Aadmi Party presented a “report card” that noted the saffron party had assured of full statehood for Delhi in 2014 but not kept the promise.

Presenting the

report card

on

Tiwari

on Wednesday,

AAP

Delhi convenor Gopal Rai claimed that the MP had not asked a single question in the Lok Sabha on the subject of full statehood and the Delhi Metro fare hike, and hadn’t proposed the cessation of sealing of commercial establishment in the city either.

Tiwari retaliated with this own allegations against AAP. He said AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal should submit the report card of AAP MLAs, and claimed that AAP MLAs had not used much of their MLA local area funds for local projects. “There are nine AAP MLAs in my Lok Sabha constituency, but none of them has done much development work,” he said. “The MLAs get Rs 10 crore rupees annually but they are not spending a single paisa from the fund. If Kejriwal is an honest person then he should submit the report card of his MLAs.”

Tiwari also claimed that AAP was not fulfilling its electoral promises. “The party promised sufficient power supply, WiFi, a check on pollution, but it did not fulfil these,” he alleged. “Now, to cover up its failures, it is raising the issue of full statehood. But the people of Delhi know that who works and who makes false promises.”

Tiwari asserted that it was he who started the work on NH 709B started but Kejriwal was claiming he had done so. He also accused the chief minister of having taken credit for completing the Signature Bridge and inaugurating it on his own, when the “people of Delhi know that the bridge was completed with the efforts of BJP government at the Centre”.

AAP's report card on Tiwari, on the other hand, claimed that the village the BJP leader adopted under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana was today worse off than its neighbouring villages. “Kadipur-Chauhanpatti Sabhapur village adopted by Tiwari has terrible roads, bad sanitation services, an overcrowded school and choked drains. It appears the village was cursed after Tiwari adopted it,” Rai said.

The AAP leader berated Tiwari for failing to clean Delhi, a promise he had made in the campaign for the municipal elections, which the party won in 2017. “He promised to get funds for the municipal bodies directly from the central government if BJP won the civic polls, but did nothing after that,” Rai said.

Neither did he do anything about regularising the appointment of the contract employees of the municipal corporations, the report alleged, while pointing out a similar failure with regard to regularising the employment of guest teachers. “He neither took up the matter with the lieutenant governor nor raised the subject in Parliament,” Rai said. He noted that the BJP MP asked just 258 questions in the Lok Sabha, participated only in 10 debates and did not bring a private member’s bill in the House.

Rai alleged that Rs 11.5 crore of the amount that the seven Delhi MPs were eligible for under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme remained unspent with Tiwari having the highest unspent balance of Rs 3.2 crore.