Should Delhi Vote for NOTA in Assembly Elections?
Okhla area in Delhi Image credit The Raisina Hills
Key Players in Delhi Politics Open ‘Revri Poll Bazar’
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, January 14: Muhammed Suleman in Okhla in the southern parts of the national capital is furious at all the political parties. “They all have invented easy way out to entice the people to vote for them,” said a small-time timber trader.
Suleman pointed out a vast expanse of open gutter flowing in close vicinity. His locality could be reached after crossing a vast expanse of mounds of plastic wastes.
Small children, as little as six-year-old, work on the mounds of the plastic wastes. A tarpaulin habitation of malnourished and poorly clothed men and women shields the mounds of the plastic wastes.
Delhi Budget: Arvind Kejriwal mounts on ‘garbage mountains’ for 2024
This dark side of Delhi can be seen with clear eyes from the high-rises and shopping malls of Sarita Vihar. An earth digger at work nearby pulls out soil, which majorly has solid waste contents.
A year ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Delhi lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena sough to give a message that he has almost a magical power to remove the garbage mountains dotting the national capital on borders with Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Union Minister for Surface Transport Nitin Gadkari also became a co-passenger with him, travelling to the Gazipur landfill sites.
The media reports claimed that the garbage from the landfill sites will be used to laying the roads. The garbage mountains will vanish within a year, claimed the BJP leaders.
The winds of the MCD and the Lok Sabha elections have blown over. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) uprooted the BJP from the MCD. The BJP decimated the AAP in the Lok Sabha elections.
The garbage mountains stand tall at Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla. Former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had vowed to free the national capital from the garbage mountains by 2021. His promise died four years ago.
Winter rains in the national capital have brought slight relief to the people. Otherwise, coughing is normal. For some, coughing has become chronic. Their lungs have braved toxic gases for months and years.
The Congress is promising medical treatment up to ₹25 lakh free of cost. The party appears well aware that ₹5 lakh under Ayushman Yojna of the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre may be far too inadequate to treat the people are condemned to live with chemical-laced air for months year after year.
A school teacher travelling in the Saket area in an auto-rickshaw was dragged for almost 200-meter after she resisted attempts of a mobile phone snatcher. Chain snatching in Mayur Vihar in several parts of the national capital is a routine crime incident.
The newspapers are full of election speeches of the political leaders. Days of readers of newspapers making phone calls and reporters visiting them to investigate civic issues while reporting them in-depth are also now history.
In the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections, only 0.5 per cent of the total votes cast were counted in NOTA (None of the Above). Five years later, it may be worthwhile if the people press the NOTA button or they choose to live with status quo as a matter of fait accompli.
(Opinion expressed in the article solely belongs to the author)
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