It is a triangular contest for New Delhi seat: BJP’s Parvesh Verma

A two-term lawmaker and a Jat face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi, Parvesh Verma has been picked by the party to take on former chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and the Congress’s Sandeep Dikshit in the high-stakes New Delhi constituency.

In an interview to Hindustan Times, he spoke about the upcoming electoral battle. Edited excerpts:

Arvind Kejriwal has written to the prime minister seeking inclusion of Jats in Delhi in the central OBC list. How do you view this?This is just a political stunt. Arvind Kejriwal has done nothing for the Jat community in Delhi or for the villagers. There has been a long pending demand for a memorial for my father (the late former chief minister Sahib Singh Verma). I have written to him, too, about a place but there was no response from him.

He has done no work -- no new college was opened, no new road or flyover has been built. In the villages where there are no amenities, people receive inflated water and power bills. The discoms conduct raids and file cases against them. Our demand for compensation for land acquisition has also not been met. There is not one project that has been carried out for the Dilli-Dehat (urban parts of Delhi). I don’t think he has even visited the villages.

The BJP’s narrative seems focussed only on the AAP’s alleged corruption and the ‘Sheesh Mahal’. This charge of corruption is very big... these are people who had come promising clean politics and propped themselves on the anti-corruption plank. They took Anna Hazare’s support. At first, they said they will not contest polls then they went back on that. Forget being honest and clean, they only spent time figuring out which are the departments where they can bend rules to make money. So, you had the liquor policy and the Sheesh Mahal (CM’s official bungalow, which was renovated in 2021).

No one expected that they would draft a (liquor) policy, where the middleman and distributors got a commission of 12% and then had to give 6% back through kickbacks. They surpassed the Congress government in its record of corruption.

When Delhi was struggling during the lockdown (imposed during the global pandemic Covid in 2020), and people wanted medicines, oxygen and other necessities, the AAP was busy with two things -- the liquor policy and the Sheesh Mahal. We have not even been able to see what is inside, but from the pictures, it resembles the bungalow of a Dubai Sheikh. I’ve requested the Public Works Department (responsible for the maintenance and upkeep) to allow us to take people who voted for them for the last three terms to see where he has spent their tax money.

The AAP alleges that the government was not allowed to work with a free hand and the LG acts as an agent of the Union government. It also accuses the home ministry of not being able to improve law and order. If the Union government and the LG had not allowed them to work, how did they come up with the liquor policy, how did they build the Sheesh Mahal?

In the last three terms, the AAP has announced a series of schemes, from free units of power to water up to a certain consumption to free bus rides for women. What will the BJP offer? We will not discontinue anything... But we will make sure that all the people get these benefits. What Kejriwal is saying now is merely a promise -- people are not getting the benefit such as clean water; they are getting huge power bills. He talks of free bus rides but look at the fleet of buses being run by the Delhi Transport Corporation. As per Delhi’s needs and population, the number should be 15,000 whereas the number now is 2,800.

Would you say it is a triangular contest or a bipolar one between the AAP and BJP in your constituency? It is a triangular contest...The Congress is very much in the game because Sandeep Dikshit has been a lawmaker twice, his mother was a chief minister for 15 years. She used to stay in this constituency. Whatever votes Kejriwal got were essentially the votes that shifted from the Congress to him.

Do you see the reverse shifting of vote happening from the Aam Aadmi Party to Congress? Yes, it will shift.

You’ve been a two term-MP and an MLA. Some people say this a climb down for you to come back to state politics, while others say you are the chief ministerial candidate. No, no, I don’t see myself as the CM candidate. I just have one aim to win this seat and the confidence of the voters. I want to meet all 1.09 lakh voters, listen to their complaints. I will make my manifesto and fulfil my promises.