NEW DELHI: After the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) last week said it will lodge a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in connection with the ‘multi-crore scam’ in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), the civic body on Thursday, said that the allegations and issues raised are ‘baseless, false and are without facts’.
Addressing a press conference, SDMC Mayor Sunita Kangra said that South MCD has recovered much higher amount against the cell towers.
“By the persuasion of the department, we have recovered this amount for all the three corporations and the South MCD share has been recovered as about Rs 22.82 crores. In addition to this, the SDMC has also recovered about Rs 22 crores till date against the permission of the cell towers,” Kangra said.
The audit report which was released last week mentioned some prominent infrastructure projects of the south civic body which have missed several deadlines.
Some of these projects are the multilevel underground car parking at New Friends Colony, Jungpura and Kalkaji, the Purnima Sethi Multispeciality Hospital at Kalkaji among others.
As per the audit report, SDMC has lost at least Rs 1,660 crore between the financial years 2013-14 and 2016-17 in cost overruns due to delayed projects, outstanding property tax and unrecovered licence fees.
“The south corporation is already running a budgetary deficit of Rs 678 crore. In the last financial year (2018-19), the civic body claimed to have earned Rs 3,219 crore and incurred an expenditure of Rs 3,897 crore,” the audit report had found.