AAP leader Atishi claims the capital city’s governance model will be panacea for Mumbai’s problems, as campaign for the BMC’s 2022 elections starts sizzling
AAP leader Atishi, MLA from Kalkaji in Delhi, speaks at ‘Meet the Press’ event at Mumbai Press Club, Fort, on Friday. Pic/Ashish Raje
Shiv Sena’s crunchy-punchy slogan to woo the Gujarati voter base – ‘Mumbai ma jalebi fafda, Uddhav Thackeray aapda’, is a barometer of how run-up to the BMC’s 2022 elections is heating up. Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) MLA from Kalkaji, Delhi, Atishi (she goes only by her first name) was in the city to announce the party’s intent to contest all 227 seats in next year’s polls.
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School uncool
At a media interaction hosted by Mumbai Press Club on Friday afternoon, Atishi spoke about how the party can bring the Delhi model of governance to the city where public education is in “a sorry state”. To buttress her argument, the educationist said, “Student enrolment in BMC schools has halved from 63,392 in 2008 to 30,075 in 2017.” She added that this was the same scenario in Delhi five years back when the AAP came to power.
The change
The AAP leader claimed that today “there is no opposition to the BMC. Earlier it was the BJP and Shiv Sena together. Now, it is Shiv Sena in the BMC. But remember, the alliance with the Congress is in the state. So, it is only the AAP that provides an alternative, opposition and can be the change Mumbaikars want.”
Atishi also scoffed, “The Shiv Sena is in alliance with Congress in the state government, but for the BMC polls the Congress is in the opposition. This is so strange.” Aiming her arrows fast and fierce, Atishi claimed that BMC schools are below par because “Shiv Sena, Congress and BJP netas are running their private schools. So, if everyone goes to BMC schools, who will go to theirs?”
Atishi also complained about the state of civic-run hospitals, drawing parallels with the civic school system. She said everybody talks about Delhi’s pollution, “but today (Friday) morning, I witnessed such a pollution haze in Mumbai. Garbage is being burnt at corners in this “international” city.”
The MLA also slammed people in charge of the city’s roads, saying that her backache, like of many others, was a testament “to where that R1,600 crore for road improvement has gone. Certainly not towards what it was meant for.” Moreover, Mumbai “was declared an open defecation-free city, but train commuters know this is not the case. There is a paucity of public toilets.”
When we began
Winding down the interaction, Atishi swatted questions about lack of a recognisable face from AAP and the party’s organisation in Mumbai. Asked how AAP hopes to win in such a scenario, she said that was exactly the situation in Delhi five years ago, but they still won. “When we began, people used to laugh at us and say, ‘yaar kaun hai yeh topiwaale’? Then, AAP’s kids (25 to 30 year-olds) defeated dyed-in-the-wool political leaders.”
She insisted that AAP is shedding its ‘activists-only’ tag and cementing its place as a political party. To several questions about whether AAP would ally with the BJP, if it had to, to win the civic polls, Atishi laughed and said, “We have been the biggest critics of the BJP. No, AAP will contest on its own.” To a statement that unlikely alliances are now part of the business of politics, Atishi replied, “AAP does not represent business as usual but a new way of doing politics.”
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