With six months to Delhi polls, slating series of freebie schemes, Will Kejriwal live up to his promises?

New Delhi, August 27: After the huge debacle in the Lok Sabha General polls, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is gearing up for the upcoming assembly polls. Swaying another magic wand in the air, Kejriwal on Tuesday announced to waive off pending water bills which were pending. Earlier, Arvind Kejriwal announced freebie for women travelling in Metros, free Wi-Fi at bus stops to free electricity.

Speaking to the media during a media briefing on Water Arrears Waiver Scheme, Kejriwal said that while some bills were due owing to customers, but many were also because of incorrect billing. Further adding he said, “Today we are announcing a scheme today to waive arrears to clean up the DJB's books. Some of these arrears are due to consumers but some are also due to incorrect billing. This is an open invite to the people of Delhi to join the mainstream and install water meters. Only those consumers who have installed meters before 30 November will get the benefit of this scheme. For different levels of housing, there is a waiver of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.”

 

Continuing further, he said, “Consumers will get the waiver only when they pay the rest of the bills in up to three instalments. DJB expects to recover Rs 600 crores revenue through this scheme. The Delhi government is fixing the root cause of compounding arrears that lie in the DJB's inefficiency and faulty billing. This could, therefore, be the last such scheme. This is a big difference between this and previous schemes.”

With the Delhi elections being six months away, Arvind Kejriwal is taking every possible efforts in swaying the people of the capital by wooing them with such freebies. The same scheme was used when he won the elections and became the Chief Minister of Delhi, but the scheme did not work for a long time though.