'Consultants paid fat pay cheques than officials'

The Delhi BJP on Sunday questioned the big difference between government officials and the fat salaries of contractual consultants and co-terminus staff appointed by the AAP government.

The party said the AAP sympathisers hired by the government are being paid hefty salaries without bearing in mind the statutory educational and salary restrictions in government.

BJP media incharge Praveen Shankar Kapoor said  the Arvind Kejriwal government’s nepotism gets revealed by the fact that salary of the “CM’s IAS Secretary Rajender Kumar for whom he fought with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is Rs 79,000 while his co-terminus media advisor is getting Rs 1,15,881”.

Reply to RTI

Raising the matter of alleged nepotism based on a RTI reply of the Delhi government, Delhi BJP Spokesperson Harish Khurana said that over 500 AAP volunteers have been adjusted in government’s co-terminus and contractual jobs on hefty salaries.

Khurana said after going through the reply it is clear that the ministers arbitrarily made the appointments and he cited the variance in the monthly pay of similar posts appointments.

“The CM’s media advisor gets Rs 1,15,000 while is tourism advisor gets 1,50,000. Deputy CM’s media advisor gets 85,000 while law minister’s media advisor gets Rs 60,000 and GAD minister’s advisor is getting Rs 50,000,” alleged Khurana.

52 appointments

Citing details of 52 such appointments before the media persons, Khurana said that BJP will now take this issue to the people.

On August 31, the Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung set-up a three-member committee to review around 400 files, including the ones on appointment of consultants, submitted by the AAP government for “infirmities and irregularities” and fix responsibility of officials for suspected lapses.

The files were submitted to Raj Niwas following the August 4 Delhi High Court order dismissing the AAP government challenge to the LG’s superiority in administrative decisions in the Union Territory.

“On preliminary scrutiny of these files, it is found that over the last one-and-a-half years several decisions taken are in violation of Acts/Rules with attendant legal and financial implications.

“It has become necessary to examine them in depth and suggest forward action. Therefore, the Committee has been constituted,” the LGs office said at the time of setting up the panel.