AAP prepares to kick-off 2022 civic polls campaign

New Delhi: With the Aam Aadmi Party here aggressively hitting the ground and raising municipal issues over the last year — poised as the main opposition party to the BJP in the upcoming municipal polls next year, leaders have now started to work on their campaign for the 2022 polls — starting with MLAs solving local issues and apprising residents of whom to hold accountable for a particular problem.

The campaign "aapka vidhayak aapke dwaar" will officially kickstart from August 25 but the groundwork has already begun. The campaign has started in Timarpur with MLA Dilip Pandey even getting DDA officials on board to visit local residents and solve the problems.

Pandey visited the Signature View Apartment in Mukherjee Nagar area to interact with its 1000 plus residents and take stock of the local issues.

"This is part of the first phase of the campaign in which local volunteers, councillors, and MLAs will go to each resident and understand their problems and resolve the issue," a party official told Millennium Post.

Residents there raised issues of stray dogs, sewer problems and boundary related issues while interacting with Pandey who then requested the DDA officials to look into the matter. Follow-ups of such issues will be done by the AAP volunteers and workers.

For the next 45 days, the party will focus on phase one of the campaign and go door-to-door to address the people's issues. The problems that cannot be resolved at local level under the MLA and require intervention from higher authorities — such matters will be kept before CM Arvind Kejriwal who will take up the matter personally.

In this phase, the AAP also aims to apprise people of the rules and regulations when it comes to local problems. "We have often found people unaware of the fact that garbage collection is under the MCD. Such kind of awareness is needed. People should know who to hold accountable when the work is not done," an official from Pandey's office said.

In ward no 14, also known as GTB ward, which comes under the North MCD and has several issues regarding drainage and sewer problems which the concerned mayor is not keen on resolving even though the MLA had asked him to do it but the requests have been unanswered.

"In such situations when the MCD authorities or the DDA authorities do not pay attention to the people's problems, the AAP has decided to solve as many problems as possible. At times we plan to use the MLA fund or through any of the Mukhyamantri Yojana and if some matters are complicated and cannot be resolved at local level then the matter will be kept on hold and discussed with the Chief Minister who will then guide the party workers," a senior official from the Timarpur Party office said.

In the last year, the Aam Aadmi Party's MCD in-charge Durgesh Pathak has significantly upped the ante against the BJP-run MCDs, often highlighting issues of alleged corruption in the civic bodies to what the AAP calls the hollow promises of the party despite running the municipalities of the Capital for over a decade.

The AAP's push for a serious effort for next year's elections also comes after several years of bitter political battles between the party and the BJP.

A long-running problem for the AAP here has been to bring local infrastructure to Delhiites, which the Delhi government has said is not being done because the BJP administrations at the civic levels actively prevent them from doing so.

The Aam Aadmi Party's rallying cry for its push to take over the MCDs has since then been that if it is allowed to have administrative control over both the civic bodies and the Delhi government, public services and infrastructure can be improved quickly and smoothly.