AAP attacks Delhi LG: Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has approved the Vigilance Directorate’s proposal to refer a corruption case involving four PWD engineers to the CBI for investigation. LG’s office officials said the case pertains to alleged payments made by the engineers to a person named Surendra Kumar Bansal on the basis of ‘fake’ invoices for the construction of a Public Works Department (PWD) drain that was never completed.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi hit back at Saxena’s approval of the proposal, calling it a “conspiracy of the BJP and the Lieutenant Governor” to tarnish the image of CM Arvind Kejriwal. The party said that Bansal was a contractor long before CM Kejriwal entered politics and he died in 2017.
There was no immediate response from the BJP and the Lieutenant Governor’s office on the allegations made by AAP. According to official documents, the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the Delhi government had registered a case in this regard in 2017 and filed a chargesheet. Officials said the case was based on a complaint that Bansal, said to be a close relative of CM Arvind Kejriwal, was assigned the work of constructing a drain along the service lane of National Highway-44.
The Vigilance Commission had suggested an investigation
He said, “In November last year, the Directorate of Vigilance had sought sanction for prosecution against four engineers of the Central Public Works Department, which had suggested a CBI inquiry into the matter, citing the guidelines of the Vigilance Commission.” Later, the engineers got anticipatory bail from the Delhi High Court in September 2018.
Attempt to tarnish CM’s reputation
The AAP alleged that this was an “open conspiracy of the BJP and its Lieutenant Governor” to divert attention from the “abysmal failure” in delivering anything substantial for the people of Delhi in the recently presented Union Budget. “This is yet another baseless attempt to tarnish the reputation of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal,” the AAP alleged in a statement.