Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri on Friday hit out at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for enjoying “revdi politics”, saying the Aam Aadmi Party chief had a “gold medal” in promising freebies.
At a press convention in Kochi on the sidelines of the Urban Mobility Conclave of the ministry, Puri mentioned that the affordability of public transport is a choice based mostly on effectivity and never on populism.
Responding to a query on making Metro companies extra inexpensive, Puri mentioned: “It strikes on the coronary heart of Revdi politics. If you hearken to my good friend Mr. Kejriwal, who gained a gold medal within the final Olympics for promising freebies, he would say ‘make the metro utterly free’ and argue that as a substitute of 60 lakhs, 90 lakh folks will journey. . And it is going to scale back air pollution.”
But, Puri mentioned, the Delhi Metro was began with a mortgage of Rs 27,000 crore from the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the metro community within the nationwide capital area might be expanded to the present 390 km because the mortgage was being repaid.
“Luckily Mr. Kejriwal doesn’t must run the Metro… Ask Mr. Kejriwal what he does with the Delhi Transport Corporation underneath him. It has approval for 11,000 buses, however solely 3,000 are operating… Before each election, he would come and say ‘I get new buses’, Puri mentioned.
Replying to a different query, Puri mentioned he might go to Kerala contemplating the air high quality state of affairs in Delhi. Puri mentioned, “The way my friend Mr. Kejriwal has spread pollution in Delhi, I would love to live in some part of green Kerala where the air is clean and you can enjoy nature better.”
Meanwhile, when requested concerning the development of the brand new Parliament House, which was scheduled to be accomplished this month, Puri mentioned that it’s progressing effectively. “I’m going there each week… work goes very quick. We have one thing like 4,000 folks working around the clock. But whether or not it is date ‘x’ or 10 days later or 5 days in the past, it is Those are the bulletins that the federal government has to make.
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
