Vasant Kunj water crisis: Saurabh Bhardwaj a lie-churning machine: BJP

New Delhi: The BJP on Wednesday fired back at Delhi Jal Board Vice-Chairman Saurabh Bhardwaj, calling him a "lie-churning machine", after the AAP MLA alleged the BJP's involvement in the water crisis in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj.

Vasant Kunj residents had complained of not receiving piped drinking water for a week.

Bhardwaj had earlier alleged that the water crisis in Vasant Kunj was "manufactured" by the BJP to create a false narrative against the AAP government ahead of the civic polls.

"Now, a few days before the MCD elections, suddenly we find that a huge chunk of the water pipeline has very carefully been broken in the lower side. We say this deliberately as the pipeline has been broken in such a way that the water will continue to flow out but since it is at the bottom it will not come up on the road above," Bhardwaj said.

"This makes it difficult to trace the breakage in the pipeline and the water obviously does not reach the households that it is meant to reach," he added.

Alleging that it was a political conspiracy to defame the AAP, he accused the BJP of trying to push the narrative of water shortage in the area.

"The BJP has made over 50,000 families in Vasant Kunj suffer over the last five to six days and literally made them plead for every drop of water just to create this narrative of a water shortage in the area and that too just a couple of weeks before the MCD elections just to benefit from the anger of the people in the polls," he alleged.

The 250-ward Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) goes to polls on December 4 while the results will be declared on December 7.

Bhardwaj, the AAP MLA from Greater Kailash, said they ensured that water tankers reached every household in Vasant Kunj.

"It was a daunting task to supply water to 50,000 households through water tankers but RWA (Residents' Welfare Association) teams pulled it off with great finesse," he said.

Vasant Kunj water crisis

The BJP, however, hit back shortly after with Praveen Shankar Kapoor, a spokesperson for the party's Delhi unit, calling Bhardwaj a "lie-churning machine" who "levelled cooked up allegations".

BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri had raised the water crisis issue in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj and Mahipalpur areas.

Kapoor said, "Nothing can be a bigger joke for the people of south Delhi than Saurabh Bhardwaj's claim that Jal Board has supplied water through tankers to over 50,000 people in Vasant Kunj area during (the) last couple of days.

People of the area have been forced to buy water to meet basic daily needs and a tanker of water was sold at Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 and local mafia sold a 20-litre bottle of water for Rs 75 to Rs 100."