NEW DELHI: Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Anil Kumar said that slowly but surely, the corruption and misappropriation of funds, and lapses by the Arvind Kejriwal Government were tumbling out of the closet, as the latest revelation that the AAP Government did not table the Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s (CAG) reports from 2017-2018 to 2020-2021 as the CAG had made many critical observations and Kejriwal had much to hide, was startling.
He said that the reports were tabled in the Delhi Assembly in its two-day session on July 5, 2022 only after the intervention of the Lt. Governor, Shri V.K. Saxena, and the CAG.
Ch. Anil Kumar said that it was a matter of grave concern that the reports of the CAG over four years were tabled in the Assembly only after the LG and CAG sent several reminders to the Finance Department of the Delhi Government, as the CAG reports had pointed out many financial irregularities by the Kejriwal Government.
He said that Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had lied in the Assembly when he said that “Delhi has been recording a revenue surplus since 2015” due to the Government’s “honest politics” when the truth was that the Delhi Government had taken loans and it had an outstanding loan burden of Rs 38,156 crore. He said that the CAG reports had disclosed that “thousands of crore extra budgetary loan is undisclosed”, and the tax revenue had been declining, in comparison to the GDP, and the losses now stand at Rs 3029 crore. He said that due to the wasteful expenditure and corruption by the Kejriwal Government, Revenue Deficit had gone up by 7 per cent, as the losses have been mounting every year since 2015-16.
Kumar said that Delhi Congress had exposed the Kejriwal Government’s bid to cover up CAG’s adverse remarks at a press conference on July 6, 2022, and CAG’s critical findings were not discussed in the two-day special session of the Delhi Assembly, which was wasted for the self-praise of Kejrwal. He said that the CAG report had observed that the Kejriwal Government had pushed Delhi into a debt trap with wasteful expenditures, and to divert the attention of the legislators from this issue, five Bills were passed to hike the salaries and allowances of the Ministers and MLAs by a staggering 66.67 per cent.
Ch. Anil Kumar said that the CAG reports had criticized the Government on the mishandling of the Delhi Jal Board and DTC, and the non-allotment of the 46,000 flats constructed by the Congress Government for those living in the JJ Clusters, and as a result, many of these flats suffered collateral damages, and became a refuge for anti-social elements.