Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor on Tuesday claimed that the beautification project of the iconic Chandni Chowk area, costing nearly Rs 99 crore, has completely failed due to the then AAP government’s flawed planning and absence of a structured maintenance plan, leaving the area in a state of decay.
Kapoor, who is also the General Secretary of the Chandni Chowk Nagrik Manch, a body of the locals in the area, wrote a letter to MCD Mayor Sardar Raja Iqbal Singh highlighting the poor condition of the world-famous tourist attraction in the heart of Old Delhi.
He also sent copies of his letter to Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva, area MP Praveen Khandelwal, and MCD Commissioner Ashwani Kumar, requesting urgent action to restore the area.
According to Kapoor’s claims, the root issue affecting Chandni Chowk is that all MLAs and Municipal councilors are from the AAP, and alleged that under their political patronage, the encroachments and illegal rickshaw operations have continued, and no concern is shown by them towards cleanliness or law enforcement in the area.
Whenever Khandelwal conducted inspections with officials and orders encroachment removal and sanitation measures, AAP councillors obstructed the process by instructing aligned inspectors to not to take action, Kapoor alleged.
In his letter, Kapoor also criticised the previous government’s hasty and ill-conceived beautification plan, which treated Chandni Chowk as a mere tourism site without understanding the ground realities.
As per the BJP spokesperson, the construction, carried out as part of the beautification, failed to consider the commercial character of the market or the issues faced by the footpath vendors and homeless population of the area.
A beautification project was initiated under the name of the Shahjahanabad Redevelopment Corporation, but the Corporation’s role ended upon completion of the project, he added.
The then Kejriwal government had allegedly divided the responsibility of upkeep between the PWD and MCD without allocating any maintenance budget, Kapoor claimed.
He pointed out that initially, MCD was given three tasks by the previous AAP government, which were rickshaw regulation, pink toilet construction, and prevention of encroachments, while in 2024, the task of cleaning the main market was also handed over to it.
He claimed that not only have all four tasks been poorly handled, but a new issue has emerged in the past year — unauthorised food shops & stalls, operating under the guise of tradition, selling adulterated milk, curd, rabri, tea, and other poor quality snacks.
He said that several complaints have come forward regarding adulterated food products being sold in the market.
Originally, Chandni Chowk was declared a no-motor zone, with only 350 registered rickshaws allowed, but today, the area has become a hub for illegal rickshaws, with two-wheelers and e-rickshaws freely operating, he added.
In the past three years, not even one pink toilet has been built by the MCD, while encroachments have peaked along the footpaths from Red Fort to Fatehpuri Mosque and on roads surrounding Chandni Chowk, Kapoor stated.