NEW DELHI: Keen to mine political benefits out of the Centre’s move, clearing the proposal to accord ownership rights of residents of unauthorised colonies in the national capital, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ramped up its campaign in jhuggi-jhopri or JJ clusters. Outsized hoardings and cutouts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have gone up across the colonies and clusters. Billboards installed by the BJP’s JJ Cluster Cell at leading city landmarks bear an image of the PM with a message, ‘Jahan Jhuggi, Wahin Makan’ (homes in place of slum clusters). The party has also invited people to get registered under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), which promises two-room houses, with water, electricity and sewer connections to the urban poor.
The party will also set help desks to facilitate people keen to get themselves registered under the scheme. The BJP and the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are locked in a fierce tussle for credit over the move to hand deeds to property owners in unauthorised colonies and are also going toe-to-toe in their quest to win over the residents of JJ clusters ahead of the Assembly elections in February. The AAP went into the 2015 Assembly polls promising inset development of slum clusters. In July 2016, the AAP government approved the slum rehabilitation policy, under which slums that came up before January 2015 weren’t to be razed till the residents are rehabilitated elsewhere.
“We will install large hoardings of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in 700 JJ clusters. The scheme will benefit around 20 lakh residents in slum colonies,” Umesh Verma, president of the JJ Cluster Cell of Delhi BJP, said. Over 1,000 hoardings have already gone at such strategic points as the Chandra Shekhar Azad Colony (Wazirpur, Sanjay Basti (Tughalaqbad), Karpuri Thakur Camp (Kalkaji), Bela Road Basti (Jungpura) and Sant Ravidas Camp (RK Puram), he said.
“The hoardings will also be installed in all the JJ Clusters located in 61 of the city’s 70 Assembly constituencies,” he said. The party has also installed display panels, featuring the PM, at unauthorised colonies to go big on the Centre’s announcement on property rights. On Thursday, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) approved a proposal to implement slum rehabilitation projects at 17 locations on a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
Not to left behind in the race to woo slum dwellers, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, last month, launched the ‘Mukhyamantri Awas Yojna’ for residents of JJ Clusters. The CM distributed ownership certificates to 65,000 families living in JJ Clusters, under the scheme. Verma said help centres will be opened in all clusters from Monday to help people fill out forms to avail the Centre’s housing scheme. “Our JJ Cell teams had carried out ‘Padyatras’ (marches) in the clusters in last November and December to raise awareness on the ‘Jahan Jhuggi, Wahin Makan’ scheme,” he said.
AAP wishes Happy New Year to seven BJP ‘CM faces’
Taking a cheeky dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday put up a poster outside the BJP office extending New Year greetings to the party’s ‘7 CM faces’. The barb was a pointer to the jostling among top BJP leaders for the CM’s post as well as the infighting within. Recent reports suggest the BJP will also name its candidate rivalling Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The poster read, “Happy New Year to all the seven chief ministerial candidates of the BJP”. IIt then names all the seven leaders — Manoj Tiwari, Gautam Gambhir, Parvesh Verma, Harsh Vardhan, Hardeep Singh Puri, Vijay Goel and Vijender Gupta.