A Battle of Brooms Between AAP and BJP as Delhi Grapples With Garbage Crisis

New Delhi: Top AAP leaders today picked up brooms and shovels to clear garbage as the party launched a cleanliness drive in the national capital, a day after sanitation workers called off a 12-day strike, averting a looming health crisis. The BJP, which has been locked in a bitter tussle with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, promptly followed with its own sanitation drive.

"We are here to support the sanitation workers... Delhi government doesn't have the money but we have taken out funds to pay workers... If BJP can't pay their salaries, we will not only pay salaries but also help them clean up," said Deputy Chief Minister and senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia today.

"We have instructed all our councilors to be out of the house over the next 48 hours," said Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay, adding, "Payment of dues is not the job of the Centre, but of the Delhi government... For so many years, under other parties there were no such troubles... Kejriwal government is falsely blaming the BJP."

As thousands of tonnes of garbage piled up in many parts of Delhi over the last two weeks owing to the agitation by sanitation workers, both the Aam Aadmi Party and BJP blamed each other for the crisis and the resultant civic mess. The workers agreed to return to work yesterday only after Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung announced that Rs. 493 crore would be released to the capital's civic bodies on Friday to pay their salaries which have been pending for the last two months.

All three civic bodies in Delhi are governed by the BJP. The Aam Aadmi Party, which dubbed the agencies as the "world's most corrupt", has lined up rallies in all 272 wards in Delhi today to highlight what it alleges as the "incompetence" of the BJP.

The party has also accused the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "abandoning" the national capital. Taking a dig at PM Modi, AAP leader Sanjay Singh, on Friday, said, "There is money to give to Mongolia, but none to pay to the safai karamcharis (sanitation workers) from Mangolpuri," referring to a neighbourhood in Delhi.