To celebrate one year in office, AAP waives all pending water bills till November 2015

Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday completed a rather eventful one year in office. During the year gone by, the local Delhi government faced many challenges, including those from the Centre, on appointment of officials as well as administrative control of Delhi Police.

While critics may question Kejriwal’s performance, a look at his poll promises shows that his government may just be making the right noises, with promises to make electricity and water cheaper. On Sunday, Kejriwal announced that all pending water bills till November 30, 2015, will be waived off.

“We have already worked on electricity bills over the last year. In water bills, we found that a large number of metres are damaged and bills are often given on average,” he said at an event on completion of one year of the Aam Aadmi Party government.

The Delhi Chief Minister and his Ministers held a public interaction, and answered questions on phone and Twitter regarding their government.

Up to 25 per cent of pending bills till November 30 for ‘A’ and ‘B’ class, which are “very rich” according to Kejriwal, will be waived off, while for the ‘C’ category, up to half the bill will be waived off and for ‘D’ category, as much as 75 per cent of the bill will be waived off.

The total value of the pending bills that are expected to be waived off is ₹ 2,854.80 crore. The government also decided to waive the payment of late fee and that will cost it another ₹923.27 crore.

The Delhi government has launched the m-Seva app, through which consumers can instantly generate and pay water bills.

He announced that the Delhi Jal Board has commissioned its first hydro-electric plant, located at its 9 million gallon per day STP at Chilla. For augmenting the health infrastructure, Kejriwal said the government will procure new plots of land from the Delhi Development Authority and add 10,000 more beds to the existing government hospitals over the next few years.

As promised in the manifesto, the AAP government is working on providing Wi-Fi Internet services in Delhi. “Wi-Fi tenders have been floated, the pilot project is planned to be launched by the government soon, after which the Wi-Fi umbrella will be expanded,” AAP said in a series of tweets.

Terming its Odd-Even transport policy as a “revolutionary step”, the party said it showed the promptness of the government in acting in the common interest of the people.

Kejriwal also outlined a number of steps taken to improve women’s security, including identification of 40,000 dark spots and posting of 3,738 home guards in public transport buses.

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