Hoardings latest political flashpoint in Delhi

Each hoarding costs around Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh to put up, and several were put up all across Delhi for free, AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj alleged, adding that that money from these hoardings could have been used to pay officers, doctors, nurses, and frontline workers of the MCD.

A scam worth Rs 2,640 crore has been committed by the BJP, which did not pay a penny for using MCD’s hoardings, AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj has alleged.

Each hoarding costs around Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh to put up, and several were put up all across Delhi for free, he alleged, adding that that money from these hoardings could have been used to pay officers, doctors, nurses, and frontline workers of the MCD.

Hitting out at Bharadwaj, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, “AAP leaders are masters of the art of diverting public attention from core issues. Bharadwaj, by raising the political hoardings issue, has tried to shift the focus from today’s burning topic of the CBI inquiry being initiated into Delhi government’s DTC bus purchase scam. It will be better if Bharadwaj… tells the people of Delhi how the DTC has been looted in the last 7 years.”

Bharadwaj said they had sent a team to get “preliminary findings” on the matter, which went to a few locations and surveyed numerous sites where the MCD’s paid hoardings are located. “The surveyors found that all the hoardings they saw were occupied by banners of the BJP and its leaders. We have photo evidence with GPS coordinates of all these hoardings. Not a single penny has been earned by the MCD because of it,” he alleged.

The AAP alleged that there are around 1,100 km of roads under the PWD, and including both directions of traffic, it becomes 2,200 km of roads where hoardings can be put up. Estimating five hoardings per kilometre in Delhi at a minimal amount of Rs 1 lakh per hoarding, a theft of rupees Rs 2,640 crore has been committed, he alleged.

“The reason behind this scandal is that whichever hoarding site was allotted to the vendors, they forcefully got them to surrender the site and did not tender the site ever again. They then started an illicit arrangement with the vendor where half the time they would put up BJP banners and half the time they would put up banners of private companies,” he claimed.

“If they have paid for these hoardings, all these leaders who glorify themselves on these banners must present the bills and prove that they paid for the hoardings,” he said.

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