(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) congress candidate from the New Delhi Assembly seat Sandeep Dikshit said on Saturday that the AAP government and Arvind Kejriwal's incompetence are solely responsible for Delhi's toxic air and polluted Yamuna.
Addressing a press conference at the DPCC office, Dikshit slammed the mismanagement, incompetence and dishonesty of the Kejriwal government for the spike in pollution in the city over the past decade.
He said under the earlier Congress government Delhi air and the Yamuna had witnessed a reduction in pollution.
Dikshit said that to blame stubble burning by farmers of neighbouring states for Delhi's air pollution is not justified.
He said that stubble burning had existed for decades but the main cause for Delhi's air pollution is the sharp spike in the number of vehicles on roads, in the absence of a robust public transport system, and severe erosion of the green cover.
Dikshit, a former East Delhi MP, said that the Delhi Transport Corporation bus fleet has shrunk from around 5,500 during the Congress rule to just around 3,000 as Kejriwal took no step to expand the fleet in the past 10 years.
He said that there was no stubble-burning now, still the AQI (Air Quality Index) was hovering between 300 and 400.
Dikshit said that between 1998 and 2013, the Congress government had increased the green cover, brought nearly one crore vehicles under CNG fuel, including DTC buses, increased public transport and rapidly expanded the Delhi metro rail.
Now, even the third phase of Metro, work on which was started by the Congress government, is running behind schedule and there is no clarity on the fourth phase, he said.
On Yamuna pollution, Dikshit said that the Kejriwal government had not bothered to set up sewage treatment plants that could have prevented the waste from falling into the river.
Kejriwal had boasted in 2023 that he would clean up the river so well that he would take a dip in the Yamuna by 2025 but failed to deliver, he said.
Dikshit said that the AAP government could not improve the water treatment capacity due to which people are forced to drink polluted water.
He said that the accumulated losses of the Delhi Jal Board stand at Rs 76,000 crore due to the corruption and mismanagement by the Kejriwal government.
In the February 5 Delhi election, Dikshit is pitted against Kejriwal and BJP's Parvesh Verma. The election result will be announced on February 8.
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