New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit Saturday ridiculed Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray for attacking non-Marathis in Maharashtra and said that Delhi was truly cosmopolitan.
"Thank God, we don't have a Bal Thackeray! We have a truly cosmopolitan population. We have people from Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, from the northeast. Everybody who comes to Delhi finds it to be a very comfortable and warm place to live in," said Dikshit.
"There is no distinction here. What is happening in Mumbai certainly does not happen in Delhi," she said.
Speaking at the Asia Corporate Conference her, she said: "Delhi is a very unique city as nothing belongs to it. Even our weather is imported. If it snows somewhere we get the cold, if it does not rain somewhere, we get the heat. We get our water from outside and we also get our power from outside."
On creating a flutter by announcing that auto-rickshaws would be replaced by battery-operated vehicles, Delhi CM said their drivers will be given an alternative to shift to cleaner mode of transport before the move is implemented.
She, however, said that no such move is in the offing for now.
"The autos can only be phased out, when we give them (drivers) a better alternative to shift, like the way we gave it to bus drivers to use CNG. Before that, it is not possible (to phase out auto rickshaws) or Delhi would come to a standstill," she said.
Dikshit had announced in the state assembly that her government wanted to phase out the auto-rickshaws, also known as the poor man's taxi.
"There has been a lot of talk about adopting three-wheeler rickshaw-cycle which could run on battery. But the battery system is not settled down, it hasn't become as credible as it should be," she said.
Continuing her witty remarks, Sheila Dikshit said she still considers herself a "PR (public relations) chief minister" having no control over police, civic agencies and land authority in the national capital.
"I have the nomenclature of being a chief minister but I think I am more of a PR chief minister than a chief minister," Dikshit said.
Her candid reply came when she was asked about problems she is faced with in heading the capital city.
"The greatest problem is the multiplicity of authority. The federal government being in Delhi has its own advantages and very big disadvantages, as all the ministries want to have a say in Delhi," she said.
"I have to run from one ministry of government of India to other. I don't have land with me, I need to ask for it, I need to buy it. I don't have police with me, whenever people say that Delhi is not safe they blame me, they don't know that I don't have the police under me," she added.
IANS
First Published: Saturday, March 20, 2010, 22:47