Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s principal secretary Rajendra Kumar and four others were arrested by the CBI in connection with a Rs 50-crore scam.
The arrests will further deepen the animosity between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and the Centre.
Kumar, a 1989-batch IAS officer whom the CBI named as the kingpin of the scam, is accused of starting a front company “Endeavour Systems” to provide IT solutions. He routed government work to the firm without a tendering process from 2006.
Besides Kumar, a mechanical engineer from IIT-Kharagpur who is considered close to Kejriwal, Deputy Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office Tarun Sharma, Endeavour Systems’ Sandeep Kumar, Dinesh Gupta and Ashok Kumar were also arrested. Ashok is Kumar’s schoolmate. After the arrests, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia saw a “conspiracy” by the Narendra Modi government to paralyse the Delhi administration through such tactics. He said the Centre has “stooped to a new low” after witnessing gains made by the AAP in Goa and Punjab.
Retaliating, Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay said Kejriwal has to answer the people about corruption charges against his principal secretary.
The Centre and the AAP were at loggerheads following a series of confrontations, including those over the President denying assent to office of profit bill, arrest of an AAP MLA on molestation charges and official matters like transfers and postings.
The arrest is the culmination of a probe that spanned over six months and a controversial raid at Kumar’s office in the Delhi Secretariat on December 16, 2015, the day the case was registered.
The CBI has filed charges under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
While the FIR mentioned irregularities to the tune of Rs 9.5 crore, officials said the scope of the scam was enlarged to Rs 50 crore during the probe.
