New Delhi, Nov 4 (PTI) The BJP on Friday accused the Arvind Kejriwal government of registering two lakh “bogus” construction workers in the national capital and siphoning money meant for them for AAP’s party-related work and alleged that the Delhi chief minister’s integrity was “polluted”.
BJP National Spokesperson Sambit Patra termed it the biggest corruption case in India as far as construction workers were concerned. He said three NGOs working for construction workers had filed a complaint about duplicate registrations and alleged massive corruption in their registration through proxies.
No immediate reaction was available from the AAP government.
Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board under the city government’s Labour department is primarily responsible for registration of construction workers and its welfare initiatives.
The BJP leader accused the Delhi government of disbursing Rs 3,000 crore among “fake” construction workers.
“The board formed under Manish Sisodia has Rs 3,000 crore as corpus fund for this year. This hefty amount will sadly be disbursed amongst the bogus entities immersed in the scam.
Elaborating on the figures, Patra said between 2006 and 2021, over 13 lakh construction workers were registered under the Delhi government’s Labour department. Of these, over 9 lakh were registered between 2018 to 2021.
“This board is responsible for registration of construction workers in Delhi. The registration work began in 2006 and till date, 13,13,039 registration workers have been registered. Since 2006, over 13 lakh have been registered but ever since the AAP came (to power) between 2018 and 2021 alone, nearly 10 lakh construction workers were registered…,” he claimed.
Patra said investigations had revealed 2 lakh fake registrations of construction workers in Delhi. He alleged that 65,000 workers had the same mobile number while 15,750 had the same residential address in Delhi and the remaining 4,370 had the same permanent address.
However, none of these workers sharing the same temporary or permanent addresses are connected to each other, he said.
“Prima facie, investigation has revealed that out of over 9 lakh construction workers registered, two lakh were duplicate registrations. 65,000 registered workers had the same mobile number, 15,750 workers were registered (at the) same Delhi address while 4,370 workers were registered on permanent address… But none of these workers sharing the same addresses were related to each other,” he added.
“This is only a primary investigation as the probe in the matter is still going on. These are not the concluded figures… There could be more bogus registrations apart from the 2 lakh registrations that have been revealed so far,” the BJP leader alleged.
Patra accused the Delhi government of siphoning money meant for the welfare of construction workers and spending it on AAP’s party-related works.
“The money withdrawn through these bogus registrations are being used for payment of their (AAP) workers, further party-related works, including for elections,” he alleged.
Meanwhile, addressing the issue of pollution in the national capital, Patra alleged that stubble burning in Punjab rose 34 per cent over 2021 while dipping 30 per cent in Haryana.
“We heard Kejriwal saying not to play politics over pollution as it is a sensitive issue and also concerns the health of children and others. But until last year, he was blaming the Punjab government for stubble burning and had assured that if his government came to power, people would not have to worry…,” he said.
“Stubble burning in Punjab rose 34 per cent over 2021 while it dipped by 30 per cent in Haryana,” he alleged. PTI GVS/AMP GJS SZM
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.