BJP questions AAP over deaths of 42 homeless people in Delhi, urges all-party meeting to address issue

New Delhi: The BJP on Monday questioned the AAP government in Delhi over the deaths of 42 homeless people in the city this month, saying that if Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal would have taken an interest, their lives could have been saved. “At least 42 homeless people have died in the first one week of January 2018, and this information has been confirmed by the Ministry of Home Affairs,” Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party President Manoj Tiwari told reporters. [caption id=“attachment_4293093” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A man wrapped in a blanket sleeps on a rickshaw during a cold winter morning in Delhi. PTI[/caption] He also said that since December, over 250 homeless people have died. Hitting out at the chief minister for preferring the Rajya Sabha elections and candidates over the homeless, the BJP MP said: “If Kejriwal would have taken more interest in the homeless instead of his Rajya Sabha candidates, then we would not have heard about the deaths.” As per the reports of the Centre for Holistic Development, at least 40,633 homeless people have died in Delhi since 1 January, 2004. The report also claimed that in December 2017 alone, 250 people died on the streets. According to the report, 44 people died in from 1 January to 6 January, including a two-year-old child. The BJP leader also said: “Let’s leave the blame game and do an all-party meeting on how to save lives of homeless in the city.” Tiwari also said that when he got the news, he went to see the conditions of the homeless in the city during nights. “I was shocked to see that how people were sleeping with the animals in the Yamuna riverbed and on the streets in the open sky,” he said. He also said that with the help of Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, the BJP arranged a temporary night-shelter for over 650 people in the Kashmere Gate area of north Delhi. As per the Delhi government, the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) runs 251 shelters — 83 of them housed in permanent buildings and 113 operating out of porta-cabins. Fifty-five temporary shelters in tents have also been put up for the winter season. On Saturday night, the International Court of Justice Judge Dalveer Bhandari inspected the Delhi government’s night shelter in south Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan area. He stressed the need to set up more such facilities. Bhandari was accompanied by Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain.