PWD contracts: Court calls for status report on FIRs

A Delhi court today directed the Anti-Corruption Branch to submit a status report on three FIRs lodged in a complaint accusing Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and others for alleged irregularities in the grant of contracts for roads and sewer lines.
District Judge Talwant Singh issued notice to the investigating officer (IO) of the case and asked him to file the report on July 5, the next date of hearing.
The matter came up before the district judge for deciding upon the jurisdiction issue in the matter.
Earlier, metropolitan magistrate Abhilash Malhotra had referred the matter to the district and sessions judge, after noting that the ACB had already lodged an FIR under the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.

Cases pertaining to the ACB and under the PC Act are tried by a special court.
ACB had earlier filed a report before the magistrate that the Gautam Budh Nagar police has informed that there was no threat to the life of complainant Rahul Sharma within their jurisdiction.

The court had on June 2 directed the additional commissioner of the ACB to assess the threat perception regarding Sharma once again after he submitted that on May 30 two unidentified motorcycle-borne persons fired gun shots at him when he was travelling in his car along with a cousin.
ACB had registered three separate FIRs on its own on May eight regarding alleged irregularities in granting the contracts.

The court was hearing a complaint filed by Sharma, founder of Roads Anti-Corruption Organisation (RACO), seeking a direction to the police to lodge an FIR against Kejriwal, his brother-in-law Surender Bansal, proprietor of a construction firm, and a public servant for alleged irregularities in the grant of contracts for roads and sewer lines in Delhi.
Bansal died in May this year.
The complaint alleged "deep-rooted corruption" and that no material was actually purchased for executing the projects.
It alleged that documents showing purchase of material were "concocted and forged", and a loss of over Rs 10 crore had been caused to the public exchequer.

The complainant alleged that Bansal operated through several dummy firms to obtain government contracts with the connivance of several senior PWD officials.
These contracts never got executed "whereas shockingly all the payments were cleared under pressure from Kejriwal", he alleged.