‘Why shouldn’t Prime Minister be the face of our campaign?’

The Modi government gave Delhi so many important projects, including eastern and western peripheral expressways to help reduce pollution in the city, said BJP Delhi chief Adesh Gupta.
| Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

In its biggest single-day event for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) poll campaign, the BJP on Sunday deployed Chief Ministers from four States — Haryana, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Assam — led by party president J.P. Nadda and Union Minister Rajnath Singh, in rallies across the city.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is yet to hold an election rally here since the dates for the civic polls were announced, is the face of the BJP’s campaign for the civic polls, Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta told  Today News 24 in an interview on Monday.

“Modiji is the party’s undisputed leader. He has given Delhi so much, why shouldn’t he be the face of our campaign?” said Mr. Gupta.

The BJP, which has been in power in Delhi’s three civic bodies (now unified) for 15 years, is looking to win its fourth consecutive term in the polls scheduled on December 4.

“The Modi government gave Delhi so many important projects, including eastern and western peripheral expressways to help reduce pollution in the city, a new Outer Ring Road, Delhi-Meerut expressway and Pragati Maidan tunnel. It was the Centre that helped the MCD whenever the Delhi government refused it money,” Mr. Gupta added.

The party’s recently-launched  Vachan Patra, which promises houses to the city’s slum dwellers, is also an extension of the Centre’s  Jahan Jhuggi Wahin Makaan scheme, under which PM Modi inaugurated 3,024 flats here for the Economically Weaker Sections earlier this month. While the PM is the face of the poll campaign, at the ward level the BJP is banking on the face of its individual candidates, Mr. Gupta said, as the party has “given tickets to hard-working people”.

He added that there was no information yet on whether the Prime Minister will campaign in the national capital. The party has scheduled a  Jansampark campaign on November 27 to reach out to one crore voters.

Report card

Countering AAP’s narrative that the BJP had done nothing in 15 years, Mr. Gupta said the party will come up with a detailed report card and launch its manifesto within the next two to three days.

Today News 24 also spoke to BJP’s MCD election manifesto committee convener Satish Upadhyay, who listed some of the achievements of the BJP-ruled MCD over the last 15 years, “Trade licences, death and birth certificates were digitised; 7.5 lakh street lights were upgraded to LEDs, 60% of which are running on solar power.”

Talking about the problem of garbage in the city, Mr. Upadhyay said that the corporation has made Delhi  dhalao-free.

“We have reduced the heights of the landfill sites by about 20 metres and by 2024 we will flatten them,” he said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by its national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, has made garbage its poll plank, promising to flatten the existing landfills and making Delhi a “garbage-free city”. Sharing its campaign plans, Mr. Gupta said that the party will hold at least 10,000 small-scale meetings with various groups, including Dalits, Other Backward Classes, traders and people from other States.

AAP’s ‘hypocrisy’

When asked about Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s demand of putting the pictures of Hindu deities on currency notes, Mr. Gupta said it had exposed the CM’s “hypocrisy”. “They [AAP] increased the salaries of  maulvis, questioned the martyrdom of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, opposed the Ram Temple. So, people know who is really with the Hindus,” said Mr. Gupta.