NEW DELHI: The Delhi government Anti Corruption Branch headed by Mukesh Kumar Meena registered a case of alleged corruption on Monday against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and former chief minister Sheila Dikshit in the ongoing probe into the water tanker scam. ACB chief said that Kejriwal and Dikshit could be called in for questioning as part of the probe.

“FIR is against the previous Delhi government chief and present government head, rest let’s see what comes up during the investigation,” said Meena, who is Special Commissioner of Police, adding that they got two complaints; one from Lieutenant Governor’s Office and another from Leader of Opposition Vijendra Gupta.

“The Lieutenant Governor’s Office forwarded AAP leader Kapil Mishra’s complaint. Mishra got an inquiry conducted and found out that the scam was during Sheila Dikshit government. In the second complaint, Vijendra Gupta alleged that the present government despite knowing about scam did nothing and continued the alleged contract,” said Meena.

He further said that the scam has caused a loss of Rs 400 crore of exchequer. “After analyzing both the complaints we have registered a case against current state head Arvind Kejriwal and former state head Sheila Dikshit,” he said. The officer noted that the case has been registered under various sections of Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act.

Source in ACB also said that after analyzing the complaints, the ACB chief went to seek Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung ’s approval for registering an FIR in the case. “After thoroughly analyzing the complaints and taking legal views, the ACB registered an FIR,” the source said.

Interestingly, both Kejriwal and Dikshit have been named in the FIR registered and will be questioned eventually.

A report of a fact-finding panel on the alleged 400-crore water tanker scam linking Dikshit was forwarded to ACB by Jung for further investigation.

According to fact finding committee report, then member (administration) Delhi Jal Board submitted misleading comments in his note regarding the constitution and type of consultancy company National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) was a government agency while concealing the fact that it is a private company as per the Companies Act 1956.

Sources said that this was not the first time that NISG was engaged with any department of Delhi government. “The consultant NISG and DIMTS had been appointed in an arbitrary manner on nomination basis which in unjustified and in contravention to the guidelines of CVC and CAG which do not allow such appointment on nomination basis except in exceptional cases,” the report said.

“Debaring of SPML Infra Limited in subsequent tenders and award of work on exorbitantly higher rate as compared to rates quoted by SPML Infra in previous tenders also lacks tender.

The reports indicates that the DJB suffered the financial loss of Rs 36.59 crores due to award of work to DIMTS on nomination basis eliminating the existing firm PCS Technologies working with the DJB.

As elaborated in foregoing paragraphs further loss of amounting to Rs 323.96 crores was caused due to award of work at unjustified much higher rates as compared to the rates quoted by SPML Infra Ltd.

Thus, the government suffered total financial loss of Rs 360.55 crores without considering the annual incremental charges. Moreover, we must also take into account the comparative loss as compared to conventional hired tankers which works out to be Rs 87.08 per 300 KL tankers and Rs 119.61 per 9 KL tankers per km.

The report by a committee of the Delhi Jal Board was sent to Jung by the AAP government for probe by either CBI or Delhi's Anti Corruption Branch following persistent demand by the city BJP leader Vijender Gupta. ACB chief M K Meena said all aspects of the case including whether the AAP government was sitting over the file relating to the case will be probed.