BJP govt pushed Delhi into debt in one year: Bharadwaj

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday alleged that the BJP-led Delhi government has pushed the national capital into debt within a year of coming to power, claiming that the city is now set to borrow Rs 1,000 crore from the open market for the first time in its history.

AAP’s Delhi unit president Saurabh Bharadwaj said the development raises questions about the Rs1 lakh crore Budget presented last year by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.

He said that despite the large Budget announcement, the government had carried out no significant work and questioned where the allocated funds had gone.

Addressing a press conference, Bharadwaj said, “When the BJP government came to power a year ago, it installed boards across Delhi highlighting what it described as its biggest achievement — that Rekha Gupta had presented a budget of Rs 1 lakh crore. While the Arvind Kejriwal government had been presenting a budget of Rs 75,000 crore, the BJP government suddenly presented a budget of Rs1 lakh crore.”

He added that the government had never explained where the additional funds would come from. “For decades, the Delhi Government presented a revenue-surplus Budget every year. It had never presented a deficit Budget and had never needed to borrow money from the open market,” he said.

Bharadwaj alleged that the “four-engine government” led by CM Rekha Gupta had demonstrated its failure and incompetence by turning Delhi into a debtor within just one year and was now preparing to take a loan.

“Over the past year, the government has merely repainted existing dispensaries and mohalla clinics and renamed them as Arogya Mandirs,” he claimed. He added that the government had not built anything new or spent its own funds, but had simply repainted existing facilities and given them new names.