Drain deaths in east Delhi: AAP protests near Raj Niwas, demands LG's resignation

New Delhi, Aug 3 (PTI) AAP leaders and workers on Saturday held a protest near the Raj Niwas demanding the resignation of Lt Governor V K Saxena over the death of a woman and her son after falling into a flooded drain in east Delhi.

While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has claimed that the drain comes under the jurisdiction of the Lt Governor-headed DDA, the Raj Niwas has said the portion of the drain they slipped into was under the AAP-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

The woman and her son drowned in the drain of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which is controlled by the LG, AAP MLA Kuldeep Kumar said during the protest.

"This was a murder, not an accident and the officers responsible for it should be charged with murder," Kumar said.

A 22-year-old woman, Tanuja, and her three-year-old son, Priyansh, who had gone to a weekly market, drowned after they slipped into a drain in the Khoda Colony in the Ghazipur area of east Delhi.

The protesters, raising slogans and demanding resignation of the LG, marched towards the Raj Niwas but were stopped by police at a barricade.

The LG office on Friday accused AAP leaders, including Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, of issuing "patently false deliberately, misleading and blatantly improper" statements that the woman and her son drowned in a DDA drain.

"While this is undoubtedly another example of abuse and scoot typical of the AAP and its leadership, the fact of the matter is that the drain in which the unfortunate incident of drowning happened at Khoda colony belonged to the MCD under the control of AAP," the LG office said.

The 1,000-metre drain was neither de-silted nor covered, it claimed.

The LG and BJP "disappeared" as soon as DDA's name came up in the incident of mother-son dying after falling into open drain in Mayur Vihar Phase-3, Kumar charged and demanded action against DDA officers concerned.

"The BJP people reach every place to protest but when they came to know that this drain belongs to DDA, they ran away," he said.

"We have come to demand LG's resignation. The DDA comes directly under LG," AAP leader Reena Gupta said while questioning who was responsible for the deaths.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor charged that the AAP leaders are carrying out a "false propaganda" over tragic death of the woman and her child.

"Its shameful that to save the Mayor of MCD under whose jurisdiction comes the Mayur Vihar drain in which the woman and her child drowned, the AAP leaders are saying that the drain is under DDA and are accusing the Lt Governor," he said.

The drowning death of the mother and child is matter of grief but using the deaths for political propaganda is condemnable, he said. PTI VIT NB NB