The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), despite its two wins in assembly elections of Delhi in 2015 and 2020, has been frustrated as many times in the civic polls of the capital city where the BJP has held its ground for decades now. Apparently desperate to end the dry run, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said his party would “quit politics” if civic body elections were to be held on time and even then the Bharatiya Janata Party were to win the polls.
The vow of Kejriwal — he had once pledged in the name of his children he would never ally with the Indian National Congress (INC) and yet he did after the 2013 Vidhan Sabha election — comes amid a row over the postponement of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections after the union cabinet gave its nod to The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022, a bill that proposes to merge three municipal corporations in Delhi. The AAP convenor dared the BJP to conduct the polls on time, saying it would otherwise amount to “muzzling people’s voices”.
“If the BJP postpones elections due to fear of losing power in minuscule MCD, then it amounts to muzzle people’s voices. I challenge the BJP to conduct the MCD polls on time. We (AAP) will quit politics if the MCD polls are held timely and the BJP wins the elections,” Kejriwal said while speaking to reporters outside the Delhi assembly.
“The manner in which the BJP government at the centre is pressurising state election commission to postpone the MCD elections is an affront to martyrs and democracy. They are bringing an amendment to delay the polls for months. We all know that the BJP will be wiped out in the MCD elections,” Kejriwal said.
He questioned if elections could be postponed by citing the merging of the three municipal corporations of Delhi. “Tomorrow if the BJP senses that the party can lose Gujarat, will they merge Gujarat and Maharashtra to avert polls? Can Lok Sabha elections be postponed by making such an excuse?” he asked.
The bill to merge the three civic bodies is likely to come before Parliament in the ongoing budget session.
The INC-led UPA government had divided into three offices the former Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) — including South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) — in 2011 as per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Amendment Act, 1911 (Delhi Act, 12 Of 2011).
Earlier, State Election Commissioner SK Srivastava had said that the union government had deferred the announcement of polling dates for the MCD election after it raised a few issues that are yet to be legally examined by the Election Commission.
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