Will regularise service of dengue breeding checking workers, AAP promises ahead of Delhi civic polls

Ahead of municipal elections in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday promised that it will regularise the appointment of dengue breeding checking (DBC) workers of all the three civic bodies if voted to power.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters here, AAP leader Somnath Bharti said a total of 3,500 DBC workers are employed at the three municipal corporations in Delhi and hit out at the ruling BJP for not regularising their appointments.

The ruling BJP has been “exploiting” these DBC workers for the last 15 years and has only “misled” them so far giving “false assurance” of regularisation of their appointments, he charged.

''It is just a matter of two months. The Aam Aadmi Party will win the civic body elections this time. After that, the way Arvind Kejriwal's pro-people policy (recently) ensured regularisation of 700 (contractual) employees of the Delhi Jal Board, DBC workers will also be regularised,” Bharti said.

Hitting back at the AAP, the Delhi unit of the BJP said services of not only DBC workers but thousands of other employees should also have been regularised long back but the Delhi civic bodies could not do it due to lack of funds.

The Arvind Kejriwal government has kept the funds of the civic bodies withheld for the past seven years as was done by the erstwhile Congress dispensation, the BJP claimed. ''Had the civic bodies been getting their funds regularly, they would have by now regularised not just DBC employees but all other Class IV employees too,” BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar said.

He said it will be better if AAP leaders stop their “petty allegation politics” and ensure that Chief Minister Kejriwal release “the withheld municipal funds” to the three civic bodies.