New Delhi: The CBI on Monday arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s principal secretary Rajendra Kumar and four others for alleged involvement in a corruption case, a development that could have significant political ramifications in the national capital.
Mr Kumar, sources alleged, has emerged as the “kingpin” in the Rs 50-crore scam in which he first first got involved in 2006. His arrest is likely to see yet another political slugfest between the AAP government in Delhi and the BJP-led government at the Centre.
Soon after Mr Kumar’s arrest, Mr Kejriwal’s deputy, Manish Sisodia, held a press conference where he criticised the Centre, calling the senior bureaucrat’s arrest a conspiracy to destabilise the AAP government.
“The timing of arrests and transfer of other officers is very suspicious. The Modi government is taking revenge for its election defeat from the people of Delhi. This is an attempt to paralyse the Delhi government,” Mr Sisodia said.
Mr Kumar, a 1989-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory cadre, has been accused of favouring private firms by allotting government contracts without following the proper tendering process, resulting in massive losses to the government exchequer.
Kumar caused a loss of Rs 12 crore
Rajendra Kumar was appointed principal secretary to the CM in February 2015. The CBI had raided Mr Kumar’s office at the Delhi Secretariat on December 15, 2015, triggering a war of words between the AAP government and the Centre. Soon after the raid, Mr Kejriwal, who is currently campaigning in Punjab, had claimed that his office, too, had been raided.
CBI sources said Mr Kumar and Mr Tarun Sharma, a deputy secretary in Mr Kejriwal’s office, and three other private persons were called to CBI headquarters for questioning Monday morning. After being questioned for half a day, the CBI decided to place the two officers under arrest along with Ashok Kumar, a close aide of Mr Rajendra Kumar, and Sandeep Kumar and Dinesh Gupta, the owners of a private firm,
The charges pressed by the CBI are under IPC Section 120-B criminal conspiracy) and Prevention of Corruption Act Sections 13(2), 13(1)(d) (criminal conspiracy, criminal misconduct, etc.) for allegedly favouring a private company - Endeavour Systems Pvt. Ltd - in the awarding of five contracts. Mr Kumar failed to give satisfactory replies during examination. The CBI alleged that the accused persons had entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused the Delhi government a loss of Rs 12 crore in award of contracts between 2007 and 2015, and that the officials had taken "undue benefits" of over Rs 3 crore while awarding the contracts.
