JOIN USThe Delhi government on Saturday accused the BJP of sabotaging its odd-even road-rationing scheme, as BJP MP Vijay Goel said he will break the odd-even rule and a BJP-backed autorickshaw and taxi union has called for a strike on Monday.
Transport Minister Gopal Rai told reporters here that the former Delhi BJP president will be offered roses twice by the civil defence volunteers before being slapped with a Rs 2,000 challan.
The government will also take action against vandals and instal hidden cameras at 25 locations across the Capital, he said. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal referred to Goel’s assertion and said that the BJP wants the odd-even scheme to fail.
Earlier, Goel had accused Kejriwal of using the odd-even scheme as a “self-promotion” tool. He said the government is splurging public money on odd-even adverts.
In his response, Kejriwal on Twitter said: “BJP appeals to people to break odd-even. BJP auto-union calls strike. In Jan too, BJP tried to fail odd-even by orchestrating officers' strike. Ppl (sic) failed BJP and made odd-even a success.
“RSS and BJP want odd-even to fail but Delhi will fail BJP yet again. Media has portrayed BJP's mischiefs as politics between it and AAP. Have the guts to call out their wrongs.”
The BJP refrained from commenting on Goel’s Monday plan. But he later issued a clarification and said: “The CM’s reply via a tweet misrepresented my statement and falsely claimed that my party and me are against the scheme.” Goel said he is opposed to massive ad spending for odd-even scheme.
Indicating that the AAP government is misusing public money, the BJP tweeted, “Arvind Kejriwal keeps saying Delhi people wanted odd-even, is there any proof 2 substantiate his claim? Or is he lying as usual?”
‘Pro app-based taxi’
Claiming that the BJP-backed union is bent on disrupting the odd-even scheme, Rai said the union has called for a strike on Monday because it wants to establish app-based services like Uber and Ola in Delhi. He also accused BJP leaders of conniving with the online taxi aggregators.
But Rajendra Soni, general secretary of the Bharatiya Private Transporter Mazdoor Mahasangh, said the union has called for a strike because the app-based taxi firms have put livelihoods of traditional taxi and autorickshaw drivers in jeopardy. The union is demanding ban on app-based cab hailing firms and claims to have support of other auto and taxi unions.