AAP will never come to power so promise of freebies don't matter: Gadkari

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday took a swipe at AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal's freebies politics and said that those who have zero possibilities to come to power can promise anything.

Asked about Arvind Kejriwal's promises in poll-bound states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, Nitin Gadkari told ANI with a slight smile, "Those who are never likely to come to the power can promise anything as they have zero possibilities of coming at the centre."

"The Bharatiya Janata Party delivered what it promised. The amount of work done in building roads in 8 years wasn't done in the last 65 years," Gadkari said.

BJP leader also underlined the recurring problem of pollution in the national capital Delhi and central government's efforts to mitigate it.

"Solving Delhi's pollution problem is a little difficult but not impossible. If the Central government, the state government municipal corporation and farmers make efforts together then we can solve the problem. We should rise above politics and work together regarding it," Gadkari told ANI.

"We have made Bio-CNG and Bio-LNG from stubble to act as a fuel to run tractors and buses. Indian Oil has built a big project in Panipat, where 1 lakh litres of ethanol and 150 tonnes of bio-bitumen are being produced daily from the stubble. We will use this bitumen for road construction," he added.

Apart from this, Nitin Gadkari also mentioned about the government's achievements of reducing the emissions from the tail end pipes of the public vehicle after bringing Electronic Vehicles' (EVs) in the country.

"Earlier our country used to import 16 lakh crores of fossil fuel to fulfil its petrol-diesel demand, but now we have brought brought EVs- E-buses, E-scooters, E-rickshaws, Ethanol, Methanol, Bio Diesel, Bio CNG and Green Hydrogen as alternatives," Nitin Gadkari said.

"When people ask me about my greatest achievements as a Transport Minister, they think I will mention tunnels, expressways. But according to me my greatest achievement is giving relief to over 1 crore people by replacing human driven rickshaws with mechanised driven E-rickshaws. Earlier people used to pull the rickshaws manually, which was inhuman," the Union Road Transport Minister told ANI.