Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Sunday (February 2) made a fervent appeal to the voters in Delhi to vote for BJP if they wanted development in the national capital and launched a broadside against Arvind Kejriwal, alleging that he ruined the city.
Apart from environmental pollution and dirty habitations, “political pollution” in Delhi had become a cause for concern, he said, holding the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the woes of the people there.
Participating in an election campaign for BJP candidate Sanjay Goyal in Shahdara Assembly segment, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu said the BJP offered the best manifesto and insisted that the AAP did nothing for the city over the years.
He said that while India made phenomenal progress under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Delhi was facing a host of problems owing to the misrule of the AAP, comparing it to the “old, dilapidated Hyderabad” of the 1990s.
Mr. Chandrababu Naidu said Delhi would have become a great city such as Washington or New York under the leadership of Mr. Modi.
He pointed out that India possessed a potent combination of resources, demographic dividend and, above all, Mr. Modi’s visionary leadership. But, Delhi was a pale shadow of its glorious past.
This was because Mr. Kejriwal indulged in personal aggrandisement like YSRCP president and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy did in A.P., and ignored people’s welfare and development. AAP should, therefore, be removed from power, he said.
People searching for livelihood were no longer heading to Delhi, instead they were making beelines for South India, where there was development.
Mr. Chandrababu Naidu contrasted Mr. Modi’s vision with the dire straits in which the people of Delhi were languishing, and pointed out that jobs were available in Noida and Gurgaon but not in the national capital in spite of the tall promises by the AAP. The living conditions in Delhi were appalling, he asserted.
Like in A.P., the national capital needs a ”double engine government”, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu told the voters, and predicted a comfortable victory for the BJP just as it romped home in Maharashtra and Haryana.
Union ministers Manohar Lal Khattar, K. Rammohan Naidu and Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, MP Lavu Krishnadevarayalu, former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar and BJP leaders S. Vishnuvardhan Reddy and N. Ramesh Naidu were among those present.
