Branch gets complaint regarding “recruitment scam” by AAP MLA, Board chief Amanatullah Khan

The Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) on Thursday raided the Delhi Waqf Board office here in connection with the alleged recruitment scam by Aam Aadmi Party MLA and Board chairman Amanatullah Khan, and collected documents pertaining to recruitments for various posts.

ACB Deputy Commissioner of Police Ombir Singh said a 14-member team visited the Daryaganj office and collected “important documents” related to the recruitment procedure.

“We are currently going through the documents and files following a complaint alleging recruitment irregularities against the Board chairman. It is too early to say which of these documents is incriminating in nature,” said Mr. Singh.

The ACB had last week launched a “preliminary inquiry” into “recruitment scam” at the Board and given a set of questionnaires containing queries on the procedure adopted and the alleged lapses made in contravention of the rules.

The ACB had sent a letter to the Waqf Board seeking details, including recruitment in 2016, on a complaint by Mohammad Mustafa.

Mr. Singh said the raid was necessitated as Mr. Khan had failed to provide responses by Monday, the deadline set for the same.

“Even if he had provided the responses by Tuesday, we would not have conducted the raid,” he said.

Mr. Khan, however, said the questionnaires reached the Waqf office on Friday. Due to the weekend in between, he said, there was inadequate time to respond.

He further claimed that only six posts had been filled by him of the total sanctioned strength of 70.

“It is baseless to say that we did not advertise the posts. Even during Thursday’s raid we submitted clippings from national dailies, in which advertisements were published. The rule book allows the chairman and CEO to appoint members for certain contractual posts, but we formed a committee, which took interviews after short-listing candidates and the appointments were made after that,” he said.

The ACB received a complaint alleging “recruitment scam” by the AAP MLA, also the Waqf Board chief