Civic polls: AAP to gherao BJP HQ today

New Delhi: With the Budget session of Parliament set to resume today, there is palpable tension in Delhi with respect to the 2022 MCD polls here — as the SEC rushes to get a legal opinion on the Centre's plans to bring legislation to reunify the civic bodies; the BJP tries to find ways to spin into an election-winnable narrative; and the Aam Aadmi Party sharpens its attacks against the Union government and the Delhi BJP, very fresh from the astounding victory in Punjab.

And as the AAP, which has spoken against the SEC deferring the announcement of poll dates at the last minute every day since, plans to gherao the BJP headquarters later today (Monday), the political tension in the Capital is peaking — especially with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hinting that the next Delhi L-G might be Lakshadweep Administrator Praful Patel.

Upping the ante over the issue, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party on Sunday alleged that the poll panel was scheduled to announce the dates for the election to three municipal corporations but deferred it after it was threatened and blackmailed by the ruling BJP.

Election was supposed to be held this month but they (BJP) threatened and blackmailed the SEC and got the elections deferred. The BJP feels that it can do anything in Delhi and nobody would say anything to them, AAP leader Durgesh Pathak said in a video message.

Tomorrow at 10 am, the Aam Aadmi Party workers and the people of Delhi will assemble at our party office and then move to gherao the BJP headquarters against their (BJP) dictatorship and to demand the conduct of MCD (municipal corporations) elections, he said. The AAP will prepare its strategy for a big fight against the BJP's dictatorship, he added.

Last week, the SEC had called a press conference at 5 pm and was ready to announce the date of the civic polls, which would put in place the Model Code of Conduct. Half an hour before the presser was about to begin, the SEC was "informed by the L-G's office" that the Union government intends to bring s Bill in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament to reunify North, South and East MCDs as one again.

All SEC SK Srivastava could say was that they had been taken by surprise and are now rushing to take a legal opinion on how to proceed. The MCD was trifurcated in 2012, since which time, all three civic bodies have been facing financial disrepair.

Staffers — from doctors, teachers, domestic breeding checkers, nurses to sanitation workers — have had to resort to regular strikes seeking that their pending salaries (often pending for over 3 months) be cleared immediately. The MCDs, which have been run by the BJP for the last 15 years, have blamed the Delhi government for choking it of funds, the AAP-led government has maintained that the MCDs are corrupt and that they are paying what they owe.

Significantly, this is a key poll issue — made that way by the AAP — this year.

Now, with the Centre's plans to bring in a bill to unify the MCDs by the end of the current session, the Delhi BJP and the MCDs are arguing that the move was quite needed and are claiming that this would solve all three MCDs' financial woes.

But the AAP has consistently come out against the Centre and the BJP since the deferment, claiming the BJP was afraid to face it in the polls after

the Punjab victory. They added that the BJP-run MCDs were riddled with institutional corruption and that the move to defer the polls was a threat to democracy.