NEW DELHI: The Delhi government’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) has registered a case against former PWD minister and senior AAP leader Satyendar Jain over alleged corruption in a Rs 571-crore CCTV project, officials said on Wednesday.
According to Joint Commissioner of Police (ACB) Madhur Verma, an FIR has been registered against Jain for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 7 crore to waive the liquidated damages penalty of Rs 16 crore imposed on Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).
The FIR was registered on Tuesday after obtaining prior sanction under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act from the competent authority. The penalty was related to significant delays in the installation of CCTV cameras under the Rs 571-crore project, which aimed to set up 1.4 lakh CCTVs across 70 assembly constituencies in the capital.
Jain was the nodal officer for the project. During the verification process, an officer from BEL, familiar with the facts of the case, was examined and corroborated these allegations, providing a detailed complaint, Verma said in a statement.
According to the complaint, not only was the Rs 16 crore liquidated damages waived, but additional orders for the installation of 1.4 lakh more CCTV cameras were also given to BEL. The complainant further claimed that the Rs 7 crore bribe was paid through the same contractors who received the additional CCTV orders, Verma added.
There have been multiple complaints alleging that the entire CCTV installation project was poorly executed, with many cameras being dysfunctional even when the project was taken over by the PWD, he said.
The bribe payments were reportedly made through different vendors by artificially inflating the order values placed with these vendors.
Relevant documents are being obtained from PWD and BEL and are currently being scrutinized, said officials. A case has been registered under Sections 7 (offence related to public servant being bribed) and 13(1)(a) (criminal misconduct by a public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, along with Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.
‘Central government fabricating false case’
AAP senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh alleged that the Central government is again fabricating false case against Jain. “The Centre is engaged in harassing AAP leaders,” he said.
