New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Wednesday alleged that the ex-Delhi Jal Board (DJB) official arrested last week on corruption allegations had passed on the “bribe” he had taken to Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) “election funds” — a charge that the latter has denied.
The agency had arrested Jagdish Kumar Arora, a former chief engineer of DJB, on 31 January on allegations that he manipulated a bid in favour of a company named NKG Infrastructure Ltd.
The case pertains to the tendering process for the supply, installation, testing, and commissioning (SITC) of electromagnetic flow meters.
In a statement, the ED claimed that the contract was given to the company at “highly inflated rates so that the bribes could be collected from the contractors from the inflated cost of the contract”. The agency claims that the contract was given based on forged documents.
“As against the contract value of Rs 38 crore, only about Rs 17 crore was spent towards the contract and the remaining amounts were siphoned off in the guise of various fake expenses. Such fake expenses were booked for bribes and election funds,” the statement said, adding that the alleged bribe taken in the case was passed off as “election funds”.
The ED’s statement comes nearly a full day after it conducted raids on premises linked to Bibhav Kumar, personal assistant to AAP convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and N.D. Gupta, the party’s national treasurer.
Raids were conducted at various locations in Delhi, Varanasi, and Chandigarh.
ThePrint reported Tuesday that ED’s investigation stems from a 2022 FIR by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In that FIR, the agency has named Arora, some other DJB officials, and a contractor identified as Anil Kumar Aggarwal, who has also been arrested in the case.
Both Arora and Aggarwal are currently in ED’s custody.
The suspects have all been booked under sections 120B (Criminal Conspiracy), 420, and (Cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and 13 (criminal misconduct by a public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The development also comes at a time when the agency continues to investigate money laundering allegations in connection with the 2021-22 Delhi excise policy — a case under which several prominent AAP leaders such as Delhi’s former deputy CM Manish Sisodia and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh have been arrested.
Kejriwal himself has been summoned for questioning in that case on various occasions.
In an official statement Wednesday, the party denied any wrongdoing, instead accusing the ED of targeting its leaders at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre.
“We condemn any kind of wrongdoing done by DJB officials or its contractors, if proven true. We also condemn the ED’s blatantly false allegation that AAP or its leaders have anything to do with this case. Not a single penny or piece of evidence has been recovered from the AAP leaders who were raided yesterday by ED,” the statement said.
The last 10 years have seen the BJP-led Centre and its “mayajaal” (illusion) of agencies like the ED and the CBI file over 230 cases against AAP leaders, the party went on to say.
“Yet not a single one has been proven in courts. This shows their only purpose is to defame CM Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party by creating a media sensation every day,” the party statement said. “By yet again naming AAP without any evidence, ED has proven it is nothing but a mouthpiece of the BJP. We will take legal action against the ED for defaming AAP.”
AAP also alleged that the agency no longer probed the cases that involved leaders who joined the BJP from opposition parties.
“Why is it that ED has stopped investigating corrupt people like Chhagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, Ajit Pawar, and Suvendu Adhikari just because they have aligned with BJP?” the party wondered in its statement.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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