Errant officers fail to conduct desilting work: Bharadwaj dares L&G to disclose names of officials

New Delhi: Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Tuesday dared Lt Governor VK Saxena to disclose the names of errant officials who did not carry out desilting work in the national capital.

There was no immediate reaction from Raj Niwas. A day after the lieutenant governor ordered a probe into allegations of corruption and misuse of public funds in carrying out desilting work, Bharadwaj said in a press conference that as urban development minister, he repeatedly said there had been huge corruption on the pretext of desilting.

“Desilting of crores of rupees was done only on paper, I have been saying this for several months. I am saying this again and again. I wrote to the chief secretary that a third party audit needed to be done,” the minister said. Despite repeated written orders from a minister, a third party audit was not done, he alleged. Bharadwaj said he wrote to the chief secretary on May 20 and sought to know how much desilting work had been done by the public works department, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, New Delhi Municipal Council, and the Delhi Development Authority, among others, what the target date was, and when the work would be completed. The chief secretary was asked to submit a report within seven days but he did not, Bharadwaj alleged.

On June 5, the minister said he wrote to the chief secretary to remind him that 15 days had passed and he was yet to receive the report. Later, on June 13, the minister asked the chief secretary to send a list of drains where cleaning had been completed so that he could verify it. Even after this, desilting was not done, Bharadwaj claimed.

On June 28, instructions were issued to the chief secretary that he had not conducted the third party audit. Their claims of desilting were false and there was huge corruption in desilting, the minister said. The lieutenant governor woke up on Monday and said two divisions -- southwest 1 and southwest 2 -- should be investigated, the AAP leader said. He should get the investigation done within 48 hours, whether it is done by the Central Bureau of Investigation, chief secretary, Anti-Corruption Branch, or he does it himself.