Sheila Dikshit (Source: Express Photo by Oinam Anand)
The senior Congress leader said the “timing” of the probe was questionable, as it had been ordered a few months before the assembly elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. “It is all politically motivated… Look at the timing, it is all motivated,” she said. A day after Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung ordered a probe into a Rs 400 crore water tanker ‘scam’ which allegedly took place during her tenure, former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit said the allegations were “politically motivated”.
Asked whether she sees a connection between talk about her return to active politics and the ordering of the probe, Dikshit said, “Probably, there is a connect in that.” The three-time chief minister of Delhi argued that the AAP government may have sought a probe into the scam to “divert attention” from the resignation of a minister and the ‘office of profit’ row surrounding 21 AAP MLAs.
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Claiming that the decision to procure the water tankers was not “hers alone,” Dikshit said a board comprising the Delhi Jal Board CEO, engineers and experts took the decision to procure them. “One BJP MLA and two municipal councillors were also part of the decision-making process,” she said.
“Whatever was done in the Delhi Jal Board, it was done according to rules and regulations… it was a collective decision,” added the former CM. The report of a fact-finding panel, on the alleged water tanker scam, was forwarded to the Anti-Corruption Branch by Jung Thursday for further investigation.
The report, by a DJB committee, was sent to the LG by the AAP government to be investigated by “either CBI or Delhi’s Anti-Corruption Branch”. The AAP government made the committee’s report public after Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta asked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to do so in the Assembly.
Special Commissioner of Police, ACB, M K Meena said two separate complaints have been received on the issue, one from Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra and another from Gupta. “We have initiated a preliminary enquiry on the basis of their complaints and are now checking all the facts related to the matter,” he said.
