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A day after Environment Minister Gopal Rai said Delhi L-G V K Saxena has not approved a file to proceed with the ‘Red light on, Gaadi off’ campaign, the L-G’s office said Rai “lied to the people of Delhi” about plans to launch the campaign from October 28. To which Rai retorted that the L-G has been “making excuses” for not approving a file associated with the campaign.
Rai had said on Thursday that the campaign was being postponed since a file was waiting for approval from the L-G, which was sent on October 21.
The L-G’s office said on Friday: “The file sent to L-G by CM (Arvind) Kejriwal clearly mentions the date October 31 for the scheme to be rolled out. Moreover, the file was sent to LG Sectt on October 21, Friday, after which offices fully opened only on October 27, Thursday, after the weekend, gazetted holiday and restricted holiday. The files sent to L-G are NOT perfunctory in nature. They require proper consideration and application of mind. Gopal Rai did a press conference on Thursday when L-G was out of office with prior commitments including dedication of waterfalls to the people of Delhi at Asola-Bhatti and then at Rashtrapati Bhawan. AAP obviously did so to coerce L-G into a decision.”
In response, Rai said three excuses are being made for not approving the file. “There are three excuses on why the file is pending – one is that on October 21 the file was sent and since then, there were holidays. For one week, the L-G, Chief Minister, Minister is not on holiday… on October 27, we didn’t receive any response and we postponed the campaign,” he said.
“The second excuse is that mind needs to be applied on these files, so it takes time. If it was not understood, you could have called me, I would have explained it to you. The third excuse is that the file mentions October 31. When we sent the file, the intention was to begin from October 31 because we need time for training. Then there were forecasts that pollution level will increase after Diwali and the CM gave directions to do this quickly. We had announced then that it would begin on October 28,” Rai said.
He added: “The L-G either does not understand the seriousness of the pollution problem in Delhi or deliberately such excuses are being made. I would like to request the L-G to stop making excuses. So far, all L-Gs in the city together would not have given as many press statements as he has… he has broken all records. Please don’t stop the work that is being done by the government.”
The campaign involves deploying 2,500 volunteers at around 100 intersections in the city to get people to turn off their engines at red lights in a bid to reduce vehicular emissions.
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