Arvind Kejriwal was given funds to set up oxygen plants, he gave ads instead: BJP alleges citing RTI reply

In a tweet, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Amit Malviya said: "Setting up oxygen plants in Delhi is Kejriwal’s job. He was given funds to set up 8 of them back in Dec 2020. He set up just 1. He gave ads instead. When there was an oxygen crunch, Center increased allocation. Kejriwal didn’t pick it up either. He is responsible for deaths."

He further wrote that: "GoI in a letter dated 7 Apr 2020, wrote to all state governments asking them to grant permission to manufacturers of industrial oxygen so that they could produce medical oxygen in view of Covid situation. What did Kejriwal do? As usual nothing. Just gave more nauseating ads!"

The accusations came after an RTI reply dated April 8 was uploaded on Twitter which revealed that the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government has spent Rs 150 crores from January 2021 to March 2021 on advertisements and publicity through various mediums.

The RTI reply, uploaded by Twitter user Alok Bhatt, also revealed Rs 32.52 crores were spent on ads by the AAP government in January 2021, Rs 25.33 crores were spent in February 2021 and a whopping Rs 92.48 crores were spent in March 2021.

This averages to Rs 1.67 crore daily even when the national capital was hit by the second wave of coronavirus and there wasn't enough infrastructure to battle the same, the accusations stated.

The reply states that the total expenditure includes advertisements and publicity through print media, electronic media as well as the internet.

Further, the Kejriwal government has spent over 800 crores in advertisement expenses in past two years.

This comes at a time when Delhi is facing a shortage of oxygen and several hospitals are running out of stocks to meet the rising demands.

On Friday, 25 people died at Jaipur Golden Hospital due to low oxygen pressure.

Kejriwal also requested all chief ministers to provide oxygen to Delhi, if they have spare.

Earlier Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday said that Delhi has been given more oxygen than asked by Kejriwal to treat the critically-ill Covid-19 patients and now it is up to the AAP government to use it judiciously.

“Delhi has been allotted more than the (oxygen) quota they had asked for, and Delhi CM even thanked the PM for that yesterday... Now to rationalise the quota in a timely manner and the responsibility to finely plan it lies with the state government,” Harsh Vardhan was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Meanwhile, Kejriwal on Sunday announced that his government has started a portal that will be updated every two hours by oxygen manufacturers, suppliers and hospitals for better management of oxygen supply.