Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 19: More trouble seems to be awaiting the former rulers of Delhi with fresh corruption charges surfacing against some of the erstwhile ministers in the Aam Aadmi Party government including the former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
A fresh corruption case has been registered against the former health minister Satyender Jain allegedly for taking bribe to waive penalty on the company charged for delaying installation of the CCTV cameras across the national capital.
The case in connection with the Rs 571 crores project was pending since May 2023. The case has been filed by the Delhi government’s Anti-Corruption Bureau – under Section 17 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, according to a statement released by the department on Wednesday afternoon.
Specifically, Mr Jain is accused of taking Rs 7 crore as a bribe to waive Rs 16 crore penalty for delay in setting up cameras. Over one lakh CCTVs were to be set up across Delhi’s 70 Assembly segments. The ACB’s case is built on the statement of “an officer of the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) who is well-versed with the facts of the case (and) whose examination supported these allegations.” The officer, the ACB said, had provided a “detailed complaint,” which included claims of a second order of an additional 1.4 lakh cameras placed after the initial delay and of “shoddy” installations.
The ruling BJP Delhi unit chief, Virendra Sachdeva, has ripped into the AAP over these latest claims and accused the party of trying to “stifle the case” while it was in power. “Tender of Rs 571 crore was given to Bharat Electronics Limited and then, to waive off losses, he (Mr Jain) took Rs 7 crore bribe. BJP had complained then also… the AAP tried to suppress investigation,” he alleged, “… but no matter how much you tried to hide the corruption, you have to answer now.”
The fresh case against Mr Jain – granted bail in October last year, following his arrest two years prior in an Enforcement Directorate money laundering case – is not the only bad news; last month President Droupadi Murmu greenlit his prosecution in a disproportionate assets case.
Mr Kejriwal and his former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, both of whom were arrested and jailed on corruption charges linked to the Delhi liquor excise policy scam and are currently out on bail, also face new charges of their own.
AAP boss Mr Kejriwal faces a six-year-old charge of alleged misuse of public funds to put up promotional posters for his party, and his former deputy is roiled in an alleged Rs 2,000 crore scam (in which Mr Jain is also named) linked to building classrooms for Delhi government schools. The liquor policy charges also remain; the report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) tabled in the Delhi Assembly last month estimated a loss of Rs 2.002 crores under the controversial liquor policy framed by the then AAP government which was scrapped a year later.
The AAP has denied all of these charges, insisting they have been fabricated by the BJP, which has also accused Mr Kejriwal of misusing Rs 45 crores of tax payers’ money to renovate the bungalow allocated to him as the chief minister. Its protestations aside, Mr Kejriwal’s party was thumped in last month’s Assembly election; the BJP won 48 of Delhi’s 70 seats to take control of the government for the first time in 28 years, reducing the AAP to mere 22, down from 62 seats it held in the previous House.
