Security personnel during the ED‘s raid at the premises of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s personal secretary, Bibhav Kumar, in New Delhi, on February 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI
A day after searching the premises of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s personal assistant and others, the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday alleged that part of the bribe paid to award a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) contract to an ineligible company was passed on to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as “election funds”.
On Tuesday, the agency had searched the premises of Mr. Kejriwal’s PA Bibhav Kumar, AAP treasurer and Rajya Sabha MP N.D. Gupta, and former DJB member Shalabh Kumar. Some locations in Varanasi and Chandigarh were also searched. The development came days after the arrest of former DJB Chief Engineer Jagdish Kumar Arora and one Anil Kumar Aggarwal.
The AAP denied the allegations and said it would take legal action against the ED for defamation. “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 party said in a statement.
Contract to unqualified firm
The ED probe is based on a first information report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation on complaints of corruption within the DJB. It was alleged that Mr. Arora had awarded a contract worth ₹38 crore to NKG Infrastructure Limited even though it did not meet the technical eligibility criteria.
Based on its findings, the agency alleged on Wednesday that NKG Infrastructure had bagged the contract using bogus documents. The tender was for the supply, installation, testing and commissioning of electromagnetic flowmeters. Mr. Arora was allegedly aware of the fact that the company did not technically qualify for the bid.
As earlier alleged, NKG Infrastructure sub-contracted the work to Integral Screws, a proprietorship firm of Mr. Aggarwal. After receiving the funds, he purportedly transferred about ₹3 crore to Mr. Arora in the form of cash and through various bank accounts.
“Investigations and digital evidence show that Jagdish Kumar Arora passed on the bribe funds to various persons connected with managing the affairs of the Delhi Jal Board, including persons connected with AAP. Bribe amounts were also passed on as election funds to AAP,” the agency statement said.
Inflated rates
The ED added that the DJB contract had been awarded at highly inflated rates so that bribes could be collected from the contractors out of the inflated cost. “As against the contract value of ₹38 crore, only about ₹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,” it said.
During the searches, the agency seized incriminating documents and digital evidence, apart from valuables amounting to ₹1.97 crore, as well as ₹4 lakh in foreign currency. In the same case, it had previously conducted searches on November 17, 2023, and July 24, 2023.
‘Mouthpiece of the BJP’
In its statement responding to the ED’s allegations, the AAP accused the agency of acting as a mouthpuece of the BJP. “It’s clear that the Modi government is a big believer in Hitler’s ideology, ‘If you repeat a lie a thousand times, people will start believing in it.’ Over last 10 years, Modi government and their ‘mayajaal’ of agencies like ED and CBI have filed over 230 cases against AAP leaders. Yet not a single one has been proven in courts,” it 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,” the party added.
“If the ED was really keen on tackling corruption and money laundering, why is it that there is no investigation into scams of the Modi government revealed by the CAG like the Ayushmam Bharat scam or Bharatmala project scam where a km of road was built for 250 cr instead of 18 cr,” it asked.
