AAP leaders sit on dharna over Chhath Puja ghat issue

New Delhi: A day after workers of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clashed over the construction of a Chhath Puja ghat in South Delhi's Kalkaji area, senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh along with AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj on Thursday sat on a dharna accusing the BJP of playing 'dirty politics' over the issue.

AAP's senior leader Sanjay Singh, Cabinet Minister Kailash Gahlot, party leaders Dilip Pandey, Durgesh Pathak and MLA Sanjeev Jha, Akhilesh Pati Tripathi, Praveen Kumar, Ajay Dutt, Prakash Jarwal, and Somnath Bharti protested against this hostile activity of BJP on Thursday.

Bhardwaj said, "Chhath Puja has been organised in this park located at the block J3 of Greater Kailash for the last several years. Like every time, after taking permission from all the concerned departments, preparations were being made to construct Chhath Ghat. But suddenly the BJP leaders reached there and they beat up the employees preparing for Chhath Ghat."

"When I reached the Chhath Ghat site, I tried to convince BJP leaders to talk to me and told them that we have all the permissions. I also showed all the permission papers to the police. But despite my efforts, the BJP leaders prevented the employees from working. When I tried to get the work started, Bhadana and his colleagues attacked me too," said Bharadwaj.

He said that on the one hand, the Delhi government is working to build Chhath Ghat at 1,100 places in Delhi, respecting the sentiments of millions of Purvanchalis living in Delhi but on the other hand, the BJP is engaged in breaking these Chhath Ghats by hurting the feelings of Purvanchalis.

Singh said, "The anti-Purvanchali mentality of the BJP has once again been exposed to the people of Delhi. This is not the first incident but Purvanchalis have been killed, beaten up, and thrown out of the BJP ruled states like Maharashtra and Gujarat."

He added that in Delhi, there is an honest government, which respects every section and every community, therefore, the anti-people and anti-Purvanchali mindset of BJP will not work in Delhi.

Adding to statement senior AAP leader Dilip Pandey said, "There are many examples of BJP being anti-Purvanchali. This is not the first incident in Delhi. Last year, on the same day of Chhath Puja, BJP's own MP Ramesh Bidhuri and his associates beaten up the state president of his own party's Purvanchal Morcha president at a

program. What happened yesterday was the repetition of the same incident which

proves that the BJP is anti-Purvanchali."