AAP, Lt Governor Spar Over Mother, Son Drowning In Delhi Drain

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) engaged in a fresh tussle over the death of a woman and her child by drowning after falling into a waterlogged drain in Ghazipur, near the Mayur Vihar area of East Delhi, following heavy rainfall in the national capital.

The incident took place on Wednesday.

In a statement issued on Friday, the LG Secretariat claimed that the drain in which the unfortunate incident of drowning happened at Khoda Colony belonged to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi under the control of AAP. "The 1,000-metre drain was neither de-silted nor covered," the statement said.

The statement came hours after Delhi Environment Minister and AAP leader Gopal Rai criticised the Centre on Friday and called for action against Delhi Development Authority (DDA) workers.

"It is unfortunate that BJP workers stay silent when a woman and her child die after falling into a DDA drain. Have the BJP leaders stopped protesting now? Have they gone blind?" said Delhi Minister Gopal Rai during a press conference in Delhi.

Mr Rai said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders were taken aback when they realized that the uncovered drain was under the jurisdiction of the DDA rather than the Public Works Department (PWD).

"When the incident happened, some BJP leaders even rushed to the spot to make a video, but they were shocked when they learned that the drain was under DDA. Now that they know the drain falls under DDA, all of them have gone silent," Gopal Rai added.

"We demand that the LG should immediately take action against the DDA workers responsible. The family of the victim should be given compensation, and the BJP must break its silence on the issue," he added.

Responding to this, the LG's Secretariat said, "Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, MLA Kuldeep Kumar, Party Spokesperson Priyankar Kakkar, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) issued a patently false, deliberately misleading, and blatantly improper statement holding the DDA responsible for the tragic death of a lady and her child by drowning and demanded the LG's resignation. The same set of lies were again peddled today in a press conference by Minister Gopal Rai and MLA Kuldeep Kumar."

The mother and child drowned in the drain in front of the Golden Palace. Their bodies were recovered at the junction point of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and DDA drain, where a steel screen was placed by DDA to prevent garbage flow. This point is about 500 meters downstream from the Golden Palace. The Delhi Police took the dead bodies of both mother and child to the hospital, the statement added.

"It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the AAP and its leaders have once again indulged in a shameless blame game, even in the wake of tragedies involving the deaths of persons. Ten years of deliberate inaction, lack of development, and worsening of civic/infrastructure services in Delhi at every level, glossed over by rhetoric and hype generated through advertisements, are now getting exposed and becoming visible to the people of Delhi. It is obvious that to escape blame and accountability, they have scaled up their old game of finding alibis to their failures," it added.

The mother and son were identified as Tanuja (22) and her child, Priyansh (3), residents of Prakash Nagar Khoda Colony.

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