Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Paris wali Dilli’ dig at Arvind Kejriwal as INDIA rift widens

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday escalated his attack on AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and took a dig over his promise of turning Delhi into Paris.

Further widening the ongoing rift in the Opposition INDIA bloc, Rahul Gandhi tweeted a video of him roaming around a stream strewn with garbage and wrote, “This is Kejriwal’s ‘shining’ Delhi – the Delhi of Paris!”

“Look at Delhi. The shining Delhi. The Delhi of Paris. Everywhere the situation is the same,” Rahul Gandhi is heard saying in a video while looking at the stream. In 2019, Kejriwal promised to make Delhi as clean as Paris and London and said the national capital will have better infrastructure, including roads, hospitals and a clean Yamuna.

Rahul Gandhi’s taunt at Kejriwal came a day after the Congress MP launched a scathing attack on the former Delhi Chief Minister, accusing him of not doing anything to tackle inflation and pollution. He also compared Kejriwal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asserting that both made “false promises”.

Kejriwal, who had so far desisted from personally attacking the Gandhis, hit back, saying that Rahul Gandhi “abused him” and he was fighting to “save the Congress”. Kejriwal’s remarks come amid growing fissures within the INDIA bloc, of which both the AAP and Congress are members. The AAP has even threatened to get the Congress out of the alliance after speaking with other parties.

The AAP and Congress had contested together in last year’s Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, but neither of them won any seats. Both parties are contesting the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls separately. Voting in all 70 Assembly seats of Delhi will be held in a single phase on February 5. Results will be declared on February 8.

The AAP, in power since 2015, is eyeing a hat-trick and battling corruption allegations from its rivals, while the BJP is aiming to wrest power from the Kejriwal-led party after 27 years. The Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 years, is also seeking a comeback in the national capital.