BJP leader Vijay Jolly on Monday presented a basket of onions to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at her official residence. Jolly said that he decided to give onions to the chief minister, as a Diwali gift, after her statement to the media that she had not eaten onions for weeks.
“I came know through media that the Delhi chief minister had not eaten onions for the past few weeks, hence I took an appointment and gifted her a basket of onions,” Jolly, who had unsuccessfully contested elections against Dikshit in 2008, remarked.
Jolly said that he gifted onions to the CM to highlight problems faced by the common man as the price of the edible bulb had touched `90 per kilo. He alleged that people were suffering due to the government’s lethargy.
When asked about BJP leaders submitting applications to sell onions at wholesale rates, BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan told Express, “It is a symbolic way of protesting. The opposition cannot possible supply onions to the whole city of Delhi, but such actions show a symbolic opposition to the current situation. It is the government which runs the whole machinery, while the opposition can only protest and raise issues which are affecting people.”
Vardhan said that if the BJP is voted to power, the party would set up a food prices commission, which would monitor wholesale vegetable prices and track down hoarding.
Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj will release an updated version of Vardhan’s book on polio eradication, ‘A tale of two drops’, at the party headquarters on Tuesday.