AAP, oppn at war over ‘credit’ for devp

Ludhiana: With the current house of the municipal corporation (MC) dissolving on March 25 and polls expected soon, city councillors and leaders from various parties have now started attacking the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party MLAs for “taking credit” of the development work approved before the AAP came to power in the state.
Opposition leaders are taking to social media and writing letters to officials over works they claim they started, and for which the AAP leaders were allegedly taking the credit.
District general secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal, R D Sharma went live on his social media page and commented that the AAP MLAs were “habitual” of taking credit for works done with councillor quota.
The SAD leader, whose mother is a senior councillor, said on social media, “For three localities in the ward, the work was approved under councillor quota at a cost of Rs 97 lakh, and soon the work will start, but the MLA from the constituency is fond of taking credit of others’ hard work. He had inaugurated a tube well in the area as well.” Commenting on ‘free electricity bills’, Sharma said that electric bills were zero because of daily power outages, adding that people were spending a lot on diesel for operating generators.
The Congress party also alleged the same. District president of the Congress, Sanjay Talwar wrote a letter to the MC commissioner Shena Aggarwal, asking her to start the works approved way back. He claimed the officials weren’t starting these works under pressure from the AAP MLAs, even though the work orders were issued for the same.
Recently the Congress councillors had also given an ultimatum to the MC to start the work approved in 2021, but the work never started. The party is now planning to stage a protest against the authorities next week onwards.
Meanwhile refuting all allegations, AAP MLA Gurpreet Gogi said, “We are not creating pressure on any of the officials, instead we are getting the pending works completed. Now when the tenure of the councillors is coming to end, they are raising hue and cry.”