Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena granted sanction for the prosecution of five engineers of the Public Works Department (PWD) in a corruption case linked to the alleged ₹200 crore scam in government hospitals, sources said on 28 October 2024. The scam involved generation of fake invoices and payments to contractors who carried out incomplete works in hospitals during the pandemic.
Initial investigations revealed that PWD officials approved the payments even though the contractors had not completed electrical works. The LG approved the prosecution sanction under Section 17A of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against two assistant engineers and two junior engineers of PWD electrical division. The engineers named in the FIR are Assistant Engineers Subhash Chand and Subhash Chandra Dass and junior engineers Rajesh Aggarwal, Raghural Solanki and Abhinav.
In July, an additional director general of PWD and two private firm owners were arrested in connection with the alleged scam. At that time, the accused were identified as Anil Kumar Ahuja, former PWD Assistant DG, and firm owners Vinay Kumar and Akshitiz Birmani. At the time of these arrests, the Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) said, “The PWD officials paid the private firms/contractors either for no work or for incomplete work against fake/forged bills.”
The ACB had also detected lapses in granting of approval and execution of work orders, causing a loss of around ₹200 crore to the government exchequer. At the time of Ahuja’s arrest, the ACB had claimed that he allegedly conspired with owners of 10 companies and gave the nod to carry out 56 works. The investigators claimed that Ahuja misused the provisions used to categorise works as emergent and urgent. The two work categories carry different SOPs for verification of bills and payment to contractors with the decision-makers enjoying wide powers under the emergent category.
The ACB, after getting a complaint, had launched a probe that revealed that the contractors involved in the scam did not have any e-way bills for materials purportedly used for carrying out electrical works. Also, there was an inordinate delay in depositing purchase invoices after the completion of work.
The LG’s sanction for prosecution against the five engineers is sure to raise political temperature in the election-bound capital with Opposition parties often targeting the AAP government over corruption. Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Devender Yadav said residents of Delhi were disillusioned with the misrule of the AAP government over the past 10 years as corruption was the only thing to the credit of former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and current CM Atishi.
-IANS .
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