The Delhi BJP said chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s government is playing dirty politics over compensation for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and that Mr Kejriwal was playing with the sentiments of the victims.
Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay said that soon after coming to power Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had in November 2014 announced additional compensation of Rs 5 lakh for each victim’s family. “In 2014 December itself Union home minister Rajnath Singh had started distribution of this additional compensation by personally handing over cheques to a few families at a function organised at Tilak Vihar. Thereafter the Delhi Assembly election notification came into effect, stalling further distribution of cheques,” added Mr Upadhyay.
The party claimed that meanwhile states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have already distributed additional compensation as per the policy of the Union government. Delhi BJP spokesperson Rajiv Babbar said the Aam Aadmi Party government sat upon the distribution of relief to the victims and now, on the day marking 31 years of the carnage, the Kejriwal government has announced issuing compensation cheques as if they were being given by them. “It’s really shameful the way the Delhi government first sat upon the relief distribution ordered by the Modi government for nine months but is now trying to derive political benefit from it by making misleading announcements about the scheme on October 31, the day that the Sikh community’s sentiments are at their weakest ebb. This shows how low the Kejriwal government can stoop for political benefit,” added Mr Babbar. The BJP also claimed that Mr Upadhyay and former party MLA Sardar R.P. Singh in July 2015 twice wrote to Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia to immediately distribute compensation, but he did not even acknowledge the letters.
