New Delhi: As the shadows of the Delhi excise policy case hover over both him and his party, there seems to be fresh trouble brewing for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with him having skipped a fresh Enforcement Directorate (ED) summons in a case related to irregularities in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).
The ED asked Kejriwal to appear in the case Monday but he refused, questioning the legality of the summons — a stance he has taken throughout the eight of nine summons issued to him in the Delhi excise policy case as well (the ninth summons is for 21 March).
The ED summons issued to him Monday was the first in the DJB case in which the residences and premises linked to his assistant Bibhav Kumar and his party’s treasurer N.D. Gupta were raided by the agency last month.
The ED’s focus on Kejriwal intensified after allegations that the main suspect in the case, Jagdish Arora, funnelled bribe money to the AAP as “election funds”.
ThePrint pieces together the DJB case in which the Delhi CM was summoned.
Contract of 2017, probe begins in 2021
The DJB case involves a contract awarded to the NKG Infrastructure — a Delhi-based infrastructure development company — by the Jal Board in 2018, allegedly based on fraudulent certificates and bribes to then-DJB chief engineer Jagdish Kumar Arora.
The CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry in February 2021 and probed the awarding of the contract for the supply, installation testing and commissioning (SITC) of electromagnetic flow meters for which tender was floated through a notice in December 2017.
The CBI FIR filed in July 2022, which ThePrint has seen, claimed that four companies had submitted bids for the contract in February 2018. However, despite receiving complaints about NKG Infrastructure’s non-compliance with the contract’s eligibility criteria, the contract was still awarded to them by Arora.
The FIR added that five days after receiving the complaint, Arora had sent his two subordinates, on 24 March, 2018, to Haryana’s Ballabgarh to verify the allegations. Following their visit, the subordinates submitted a report recommending that the NKG Infrastructure bids should be rejected.
However, the CBI alleged that Arora then hatched a conspiracy with his other three subordinates, prepared another note in April 2018, and awarded the contract worth approximately Rs 38 crore to NKG Infrastructure.
In July 2022, the CBI booked Arora, his three subordinates and officials of the National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd (NBCC) for issuing three false certificates to NKG Infrastructure under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), and section 13 (1) with (2) of The Prevention of Corruption Act.
ED’s involvement & AAP connections
The ED took cognisance of the CBI’s FIR and filed an Enforcement Case Information Report in September 2022 and conducted the first raid in July of the same year, followed by another round of searches in November.
In January this year, the agency arrested Jagdish Arora and one Anil Kumar Aggarwal linked to Integral Screws Ltd, to which the DJB’s contract to NKG Infrastructure was subcontracted. The ED alleged that Aggarwal transferred Rs 3 crore in bribes to Arora’s relatives and associates.
Just a week later, the ED raided various locations in Varanasi, Chandigarh and Delhi, including the premises linked to Kejriwal’s assistant Bibhav Kumar and the party’s national treasurer N.D. Gupta in the case.
After the raids, the agency issued a statement alleging that Arora had approved the contract to NKG Infrastructure at an inflated cost and for the contract of Rs 38 crore, only Rs 17 crore was spent for the contracted work, while the remaining was passed on as bribe to the DJB officials and as “election funds” to the ruling AAP.
“ED investigation revealed that M/s NKG Infrastructure Ltd obtained the bid by submitting forged/ fake/ false documents. Jagdish Kumar Arora, the then-chief engineer, Delhi Jal Board, was aware of the fact that the company did not meet the technical eligibility. He received a bribe amount both in cash and bank accounts,” the agency said in a statement issued on 7 February.
It added that investigations and digital evidence show that Arora passed on the bribe funds to various persons connected with managing the affairs of the Delhi Jal Board, including persons connected with AAP. “Bribe amounts were also passed on as Election Funds to AAP,” it said.
“The ED investigation further revealed that the contract of DJB was awarded at highly inflated rates so that the bribes could be collected from the contractors from the inflated cost of the contract,” said the ED statement.
It added that, “as against the contract value of Rs 38 crore, only about Rs 17 crore was spent towards the contract and the remaining amount was siphoned off in the guise of various fake expenses. Such fake expenses were booked for bribes and election funds.”
Notably, AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha was the vice-chairman of the DJB between 2020 and 2022, when he was elected to the upper house of Parliament and Saurabh Bharadwaj replaced him until he became a cabinet minister in the Kejriwal government last year.
Meanwhile, Kejriwal, was summoned by the agency to appear for questioning in the case.
Sources in the ED told ThePrint he would be issued a fresh summons in this case.
By the trajectory of the development, the case is falling into the same pattern as the ongoing Delhi excise policy case in which the CBI first filed an FIR making the former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia an accused.
Over nearly 18 months, the AAP has seen several of its high-profile leaders, such as Sisodia, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh and campaign manager Vijay Nair being arrested by the central probe agencies and are languishing in jail.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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