Garbage 'dumped' for Upadhyay to clean at Swachh Bharat event

NEW DELHI: In an embarrassment to PM Modi’s cleanliness campaign, Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay was spotted clearing garbage that was first placed at the venue a few hours earlier by NDMC workers. Ex-AAP leader Shazia Ilmi and a few other leaders too had wielded the broom in front of the India Islamic Cultural Centre (IICC) in central Delhi’s Lodhi Estate area on Wednesday.

Photos showed that sanitation workers brought garbage on a trolley and littered the pavement sometime before Upadhyay, Ilmi and others wielded the broom. Pictures and videos of workers carrying garbage to the venue and displaying it evenly were shown on TV channels on Thursday.

Upadhyay said: “Swachh campaign was a commitment and a not photoop. It was a programme of IICC. I had just gone there for few minutes.

it,” he told the media. Other BJP functionaries refused to comment.

“India Islamic Centre invited me among many others for the safai drive yesterday. I was a guest at the centre for the event,” tweeted Ilmi. MW Sajid, media advisor to IICC president, said municipality workers had turned up at the venue on their own after the cleanliness programme was announced and the officials at the institute had no clue about it. “We had complained to them several times about unclean localities around the institute but they had not taken any action till Wednesday.” An NDMC official said sanitation workers who littered the pavement do not belong to the agency though the area falls under it.

Delhi Congress chief AS Lovely said: “The BJP-ruled MCD has never taken up the issue seriously. The prime minister has started talking about it only now. It is only photo-op session, not more than that.”

(With inputs from PTI)