The municipal headquarters at the Civic Centre on Wednesday became the scene of protests with both Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders staging demonstrations and flagging issues ahead of the scheduled mayoral election next week.
Mayor Mahesh Kumar (AAP), accompanied by leader of house Mukesh Goyal and AAP councillors, staged a demonstration outside commissioner Ashwani Kumar’s office on the ninth floor on Wednesday.
Their demands included regularisation of 12,000 contract workers, house tax reductions, and the rollback of “garbage user charge”. At the same time, BJP councillors protested outside the mayor’s office on the third floor raising similar concerns but alleging that it was “AAP collaborating with the executive wing” to implement decisions detrimental to public interest.
The AAP-controlled MCD had previously announced plans to regularise sanitation staff, waive 100% property tax for Delhi properties under 100 square yards and give a 50% rebate on properties between 100 and 500 square yards in the budget presented by the LoH. However, none of these proposals was implemented.
On Wednesday, the group sought a meeting with the commissioner, who absent from the office. “We marched to the office of the MCD commissioner only to find him conveniently absent. The commissioner reportedly left citing a court hearing, prompting AAP councillors to stage a prolonged sit-in inside his office, demanding accountability on the house-passed proposals for house tax exemption and regularisation of 12,000 temporary workers. Their protest ended with sloganeering, as the top civic bureaucrat did not return,” the party said in a statement.
The mayor alleged that the commissioner deliberately avoided a scheduled meeting with AAP councillors, who came to his office to raise critical civic issues. “Despite prior intimation, the commissioner left the office on the pretext of attending an NGT event before the councillors arrived,” he added.
MCD officials have countered that these announcements lacked proper budgetary allocations and were made after the deadline for tax rate modifications passed. The mayor has alleged that the commissioner unilaterally imposed additional garbage user charges on Delhi’s residents without consulting him or passing any resolution in the house.
“We strongly oppose this unjust decision and demand the immediate withdrawal of these user charges. Before meeting the commissioner, we met BJP councillors and invited them to join us in our fight. But they refused. The truth is, it was the BJP that imposed user charges on the people in 2016. And today, they are pretending to oppose what they themselves enforced,” he added.
The protesting BJP councillors alleged that the AAP was collaborating with the executive wing to implement decisions detrimental to public interest. Leader of opposition (LoP) Sardar Raja Iqbal Singh and deputy LoP Jai Bhagwan Yadav labelled the AAP as “anti-people.”
“The party that once claimed to stand for the common citizen has, ever since gaining control of MCD three years ago, been working towards its downfall. On one hand, the cleanliness system of Delhi is in shambles, with garbage not being picked up for days, and heaps of waste piling up in the streets. On the other hand, the AAP has begun collecting user charges along with property tax for garbage collection,” said Singh. He said that AAP leaders were clandestinely implementing user charges in collaboration with officials, while the mayor engages in letter-writing and performative protests.
BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said that “despite repeated demands from the BJP, the mayor is neither directing the municipal commissioner to withdraw the user charges nor convening a meeting of the municipal house to pass a resolution to revoke them. This clearly shows a secret understanding between the mayor and the municipal commissioner.”
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