MCD elections: Congress for ballot papers, Maken attacks civic bodies

Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken . Photo: PTI (File)

NEW DELHI: Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken has written to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the State Election Commission, seeking use of ballot papers in the MCD polls. He was addressing a press conference at the DPCC headquarters here, on a day the date of civic polls were announced. The senior Congress leader also said that he has written to the city police commissioner, seeking filing of FIR against the then mayors of three municipal corporations alleging "carelessness and corruption" on part of the civic bodies thatled to death of 409 people from dengue in 2015. "The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report for 2015, which was tabled in the Delhi Assembly on March 10, 2017 has held the Delhi government, the municipal corporations and the Central government responsible for the many dengue and chikungunya deaths as the Delhi government seemed to have learnt no lessons from the past experience," Maken claimed. Maken said the CAG was provided information from MCD that 60 deaths due to dengue took place in the year 2015 whereas the CAG mentioned that the hospitals in Delhi had reported 409 deaths due to dengue. "A total of 83.63 lakh houses were treated with six different types of insecticides applying three different techniques," he said. "Of these, 72.07 lakh houses (86.17 per cent) were treated adopting techniques/chemical formulations that are not prescribed or recommended by either the Directorate of National Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme for the programme guidelines for containment of chikungunya and dengue epidemic outbreak," he alleged. Maken claimed that the expenditure incurred on such treatment was Rs 2.55 crore. There was also no assessment as to the effectiveness of the methods adopted in vector control.