NEW DELHI: Delhi L-G VK Saxena has asked the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to look into the allegations of corruption and misuse of public funds to the tune of nearly Rs 80 crore by the PWD officials in carrying out desilting work in the Palam area, Raj Niwas officials said on Monday.
A complaint dated August 11 addressed to the L-G alleged that the officials involved in the desilting work in Southwest Road-I and Southwest Road-II Divisions of the Public Works Department in Palam area are engaged in “serious irregularities, including misuse of public funds, blatant disregard for established tender norms, and other serious corrupt practices”, officials said.
The principal secretary to LG has written to the chief secretary conveying the orders of Saxena.
The complainant has named Executive Engineer Ashish Gupta, Junior Engineer Ajay Kumar Meena, Assistant Engineer Dharam Singh Meena, along with the contractor Surender Singh, and other PWD employees for being directly involved in the wrongdoings.
According to officials, the complaint alleged that one single contractor was “unduly favoured.” Nearly Rs 80 crore were fraudulently paid to the single contractor in connivance with PWD Engineers and officials over a span of four years (2021-22 to 2024-25), in just two divisions of PWD.
“Keeping in view the severity, and scale of the alleged irregularities supported with substantial proof of corruption in the complaint, Lt. Governor has desired that this matter may kindly be referred to the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) for in depth investigation, so that further course of action be initiated, as per rules,” said the communication to the Chief Secretary from LG Secretariat.
“It is also requested that an action taken report in the matter may be forwarded to this Secretariat, at the earliest,” it said.
The complaint claimed there were irregularities committed in the measurement of work and double payments were made, besides fabrication of non-existent work, violation of tender rules and facilitation of manual scavenging and over-inflation of tender rates and misappropriation of funds, the officials said.
The complainants have also alleged fraudulent billing for consecutive four years along with obstruction of RTI requests and cover-up attempts.