Aam Aadmi Party government is more than two years old. It came to Delhi with high expectation and high hopes as the people gave its agenda an overwhelming thumbs up. However, the highlight of the two years of the government has been its tussle with the Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najib Jung and indeed the BJP led NDA government at the center. It has accused the BJP of not letting it work and blamed the LG for stalling its good work.
If we look at its performance closely we shall see that it has indeed performed on some fronts but failed miserably on the others.
It’s one of the most advertised schemes has been the Mohalla Clinics which have been showcased as world class and have been praised the world over. It started 110 Mohalla Clinics in Delhi which. These clinics have treated eight lakh patients as per the government’s claim. The well equipped Mohalla clinics are truly state- of-the-art and treat the patients free of cost. The critics, however, say that the scheme is yet to become fully operational as it is just in a demo mode as the AAP had given a target of 1000 clinics by 2016 but the deadline has not been met.
The next important work that AAP had to do was to tackle the pollution in Delhi which is one of the most polluted cities in the world. The Delhi High court dubbed it as “Gas chamber” and asked plan of action from the Delhi government. The government could not come up with a viable plan. All it did was to implement the odd-even formula for running the vehicles in the capital. But that turned out to be a cosmetic remedy as no concrete results were obtained by that.
On the education front, the AAP has flip-flopped many times. It came up with guidelines for the nursery admissions of the young ones and fixing the fees but that was challenged in the court and could not be implemented. A lot of confusion was caused due to the uncertainty.
Similarly, AAP identified 3.5 lakh children in class 6 to 8 who could not read and provided them with special care. After two months campaign, it announced that one lakh children were enabled who could now read. These statistics have been challenged by many experts as well.
AAP has started construction of new classrooms in existing schools to increase the number of students and so far constructed 8000 new classrooms. Besides, it identified 29 plots for new schools and sanctioned another 10,000 classrooms.
AAP has won the praise of the people when it comes to electricity as it slashed the bills of people by half who consume less than 400 units. Similarly, its scheme of free water till 30,000 liters has also been a hit with the people, though the water scarcity continues.
AAP has been unable to implement its promise of a Lokpal in Delhi but for that, it cannot be blamed alone for there are other factors responsible for that.
In all it has been a mixed report card for AAP, it delivered on some points but could not bring about radical changes in Delhi. Maybe it is not to be blamed alone as Center and state coordination is crucial for the administration of Delhi.
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