NEW DELHI: Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday that while no central government minister had been accused of corruption, some Delhi ministers had been sent to jail.
She was speaking at a party programme in east Delhi's East Azad Nagar as part of BJP's nationwide outreach programme on the completion of nine years by the Modi government.Criticising the chief minister for constructing a "grand palace costing Rs 45-50 crore" as his residence, Sitharaman alleged, "A sheesh mahal is being built.
People's money should be used for people's welfare, not to build your own house."She accused the Delhi regime of corruption, unlike the central government, where no minister, she declared, was tainted with accusations of corruption.
She also claimed, "In 2012, Kejriwal said that Sharad Pawar had a Swiss bank account and claimed to know his account number.
In 2013, he charged Lalu Yadav with earning crores of rupees in the fodder scam.
Now he is meeting them.
This shows his intentions are not clean."Sitharaman also accused the AAP convener of getting his Punjab counterpart, Bhagwant Singh Mann, to accompany him on his travels across India to be able to use the latter's state aircraft.There was no reaction from Delhi government or AAP to these allegations.Sitharaman claimed that under PM Narendra Modi, India had emerged as the fastest growing economy in the world, while, she alleged, Delhi, under the AAP government, was in a "sorry state" of affairs.The Union minister also criticised the opposition parties, including Congress, saying they tried to pressure the central government to print more currency notes and to take big loans during the pandemic.BJP Delhi president Virendra Sachdeva said at the event, "We had never imagined that Article 370 would be scrapped and or that the Ram mandir would be built.
But these things have happened in our lifetime."On his part, East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir said that when he became a member of Parliament, his aim was to lessen the mountain of garbage at the Ghaziabad landfill.
"The PM once told me that I would do it if I believed I could do it," said Gambhir.
He also maintained that while the central government doled out rations and vaccines "without asking anyone for their ID cards, some people keep politicising everything, but the PM ensures everyone's development".