MCD polls: Who will people trust on cleanliness – PM Modi or Kejriwal?

New Delhi: Ahead of the crucial Municipal Corporation of Delhi polls, main adversaries Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party are trying hard to lay their respective claims over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's legacy of “cleanliness”.

While PM Modi has been pushing for the concept of Swachh Bharat or Clean India over the past few years, it is Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who is trying to wrest the legacy from the state unit of BJP ahead of the crucial civic body polls in the national capital.

Ahead of the crucial date, the two parties are trying to win over the electorate over the core issue of cleanliness, the core issue that needs to be serviced by the civic body.  The polls for the MCD, one of the richest and most powerful civic bodies in the country, are scheduled to be held on December 4 and the results will be declared on December 7.

The Delhi Chief Minister and his Aam Aadmi Party colleagues, including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, are trying hard to associate with the “swachhata” (cleanliness) concept that was brought to the forefront by the Prime Minister.

The top AAP leaders have taken the BJP leadership and its ruled MCD to task over the past few weeks for the inability of the civic body in dealing with the sanitation issues of the national capital. AAP has repeatedly tried to raise the issue of mountains of garbage piling up at various locations, including Gazipur, Okhla and Bhalaswa landfills, and also take up the cause of not enough sanitation staff in the civic body.  “This is an attempt by AAP to take command of the cleanliness issue and wrest it from the Delhi BJP,” said a senior leader.

The AAP had shrewdly in the last Assembly polls in 2020 given the slogan "Kendra me Modi aur Delhi me Kejriwal" (Modi at Centre and Kejriwal in Delhi Assembly), sources pointed out. AAP leadership has also tried to refrain from directly attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi so far, in the hope to garner his legacy, in the MCD polls just as they did in the Assembly polls.

However, AAP’s attempts at the politicization of the sanitation issue have come for retaliation by the Bharatiya Janata Party which tried to corner the AAP government over cleaning of Yamuna river.

At the recent Chhath celebrations, the BJP leadership was out on the ground trying to drive home the point that the AAP had failed the Poorvanchali community and Delhi’s voters at large as it had failed to clean the river, despite making several claims of doing so several years ago.

Senior BJP functionaries, including Delhi chief Adesh Gupta, leader of opposition Ramvir Singh Bidhuri and MPs Manoj Tiwari and Parvesh Verma, visited various ghats to raise this issue.

In their attempt to take on AAP, over the past few days, several BJP leaders have also tried to target the Arvind Kejriwal-led party by cornering it in Punjab over its sanitation record. Several BJP leaders have also posted videos of mountains of garbage piling up in various parts of Punjab, asking the Bhagwant Mann government tough questions regarding it.

Parali burning was another issue taken up by the Delhi BJP unit against the Punjab government. As the AAP now runs governments in both Delhi and Punjab it has been really tough for the Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit to shy away from taking responsibility.

In fact, BJP leadership has become somewhat successful in pinning the blame and the ensuing pollution in the national capital entirely on the two AAP governments.

Despite the slugfest between the two parties, the onus would be on the voters of the city to elect a civic body that will ensure a clean and responsible civic body in the national capital.

With the Congress unit giving up even before the electoral process has begun, it will be a direct contest between the BJP and AAP for the control of one of the MCDs. The AAP has already deployed all its resources from its Punjab unit as well to the city in an effort to gain control over the civic body for the first time ever.

AAP also feels that it has a strategic advantage over the BJP, which is embroiled in infighting and rebellion over ticket distribution, as it will be fighting the MCD polls unitedly under the leadership of Kejriwal.