Delhi BJP terms AAP govt budget a damp ‘squib’

New Delhi: The Delhi BJP on Wednesday hit out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its budget saying it was nothing but a “damp squib”.

Reacting to the Delhi 2023 budget, state BJP Working President Virendra Sachdeva said despite endless discussions, the budget turned out to be “extremely disappointing”. Budget allocation in all the important sectors like health, transport, social welfare have been reduced.

Sachdeva said that the Finance Minister of Delhi read the budget like a serial for 2 hours and 27 minutes, but said nothing new. The nine schemes announced in the name of clean, beautiful and modern Delhi are old. Similarly, transport infrastructure, Yamuna cleaning, lakes development and Delhi Jal Board all are schemes that were announced earlier.

In important sectors like health, transport, social welfare, the government has reduced the budget allocation and so is the case with education. But the real character of the government got exposed with the budget allocation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

For the last eight years, the BJP has been asking this government to increase the budget of the MCD but to no avail. But now, an unprecedented increase in the its budget was made as soon as its party got into power. Last year, the budget was Rs 4,794 crore, which has now been increased to Rs 8,241 crore, Sachdeva said.

By almost doubling the budget of MCD as soon as his party came to power, the Arvind Kejriwal government has proved that it used to give step-motherly treatment to the BJP-ruled Municipal Corporation, he added.

The scheme for renovation of roads was in 2021 announced by the then PWD Minister Satyendar Jain and later by Manish Sisodia in 2022 when he was a minister, the BJP leader stated.
IANS