Arvind Kejriwal bats for holding long-due mayoral election

NEW DELHI: AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal urged mayor Shelly Oberoi on Wednesday to hold the mayoral election , which has been pending for over six months and ensure that the Scheduled Castes community received their due rights.

Kejriwal said, "This year, the MCD mayor is to be a member of the SC community. However, I discovered after leaving jail that the party in opposition had hatched a conspiracy not to allow the mayor's election to take place. I urge mayor Oberoi to immediately conduct the election."

In a letter to Oberoi, Kejriwal extended his congratulations to the newly regularised 607 workers, many of whom have been working on contract in MCD since 1998. The civic body held a ceremony on Wednesday to hand over the regularisation letters to them. Of them, 399 are working on contract with the environment management services and the rest in the education department.

Chief minister Atishi and Oberoi handed over the certificates to the beneficiaries. While Kejriwal could not attend the event, he wrote a letter to Oberoi stating, "Since our govt took charge of MCD, sanitation workers now receive their salaries in the first week of every month. Earlier, these poor workers went months without pay and had to stage protests to receive their due wages. Because of our efforts, sanitation workers, particularly from the Valmiki community, wholeheartedly bless the AAP govt."

Atishi added that the state govt was striving for over a decade to provide world-class education in govt schools so that underprivileged students got the opportunity to succeed in life. "In the last two years, AAP in MCD has regularised around 10,000 sanitation workers, which shows that we are equally concerned about the welfare of these people working so hard to keep the city neat and clean," she said. "If there's any govt fulfilling the dream of Maharishi Valmiki, it is AAP."

Sardar Raja Iqbal Singh, leader of the opposition in the MCD, rebutted that the proposal to regularise the contract employees was originally sent to Delhi govt by the three BJP-run municipal corporations in 2021-22 and then CM Kejriwal had turned down the proposal and so the employees couldn't be regularised in 2021.

"Kejriwal avoided attending the event on Wednesday for fear of facing criticism for the financial collapse of MCD under his govt over the last decade." Singh alleged. "As for the election of the mayor from the reserved category, I personally appealed to CM Atishi and requested that the necessary committees be formed to ensure the release of ward development funds. But the matter just continued getting delayed."

The election of the new mayor has remained suspended since April due to the lieutenant governor citing the requirement of "input from the chief minister regarding the appointment of the presiding officer for the election". Now that Atishi has taken over as CM, the process is expected to start soon.