Criticism and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal seem to be inseparable. After being called a ‘peculiar person’ by Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, Delhi CM received fresh criticism from his Haryana counterpart Manohar Lal Khattar. Khattar accused him of “pollution politics” and asked him to “rise above vote-bank politics.” Earlier, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal shrugged off the pollution menace and blamed it on the farmers in Punjab and Haryana for burning crop stubble to clear off the land for new sown. Delhi CM Kejriwal said that he had written to the chief ministers of both Punjab and Haryana. Thereafter, Delhi CM and Haryana CM took to Twitter to air their views in full public view.

Also, in a letter that Khattar posted on Twitter, the Haryana CM fired a shot directly at Kejriwal and questioned his intentions vis a vis about 40000 farmers in Delhi and virtually said that they too can be the cause of the pollution problem. He had said, “There are 40,000 farmers in Delhi. What are you doing about them?” Khattar, while replying to Kejriwal on a tweet about a meeting between both to thrash out the problem said, “I will be in Delhi on Monday and Tuesday. There is no response from your office at the meeting.”

The smog in Delhi arrives at the beginning of every winter as farmers in north India, especially in Punjab and Haryana burn agricultural crop stubble in extremely large quantities. The smoke from such large-scale stubble burning travels towards Delhi. This smoke when mixed with other pollutants that are seen around the capital turn into a deadly grey smog. Recently, Delhi government went on to shut the schools and introduced Odd-Even rule on Delhi roads as to counter the Delhi pollution.

“We have taken all possible steps in Haryana. We have also requested people burning stubble to not do so,” Khattar said, alleging that Punjab is the bigger culprit. He said that while the neighbouring state had not used “a penny out of 98 crores allotted to check farm fires, Haryana used 39 crores out of 45 crores allotted” to it for the purpose.

To counter Khattar’s comments, Kejriwal said that his office is constantly trying to fix up the meeting. He took to Twitter and said, “Sir, my office is constantly trying to fix a meeting.”

The Punjab Chief Minister had said earlier, “If I have got 20 million tonnes of paddy straw, if I ask the farmer to store this, farms will be covered with the paddy straw. Kejriwal doesn’t understand this problem.”

UPDATE:

In a tweet, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has shared that he will meet up with the Haryana counterpart on Wednesday in Chandigarh. With the busy schedule of Haryana CM, ML Khattar told Kejriwal that he won’t be able to take out time to meet with Arvind Kejriwal.