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HomeIndiaWhy Swati Maliwal is in the dock for ‘illegal appointments’ to Delhi's...

Why Swati Maliwal is in the dock for ‘illegal appointments’ to Delhi’s women’s rights body

A Delhi court Thursday ordered framing of charges against Maliwal and three others for 'prima facie' abusing their official positions to appoint AAP workers to different DCW posts.

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New Delhi: A list of 85 “illegal appointments” to the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), submitted by a BJP member to the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) in 2016, has culminated in a local court ordering for the framing of corruption and criminal conspiracy charges against the women’s right body chief Swati Maliwal.

Citing “strong suspicion”, the Delhi court Thursday ordered that charges be framed against Maliwal and three others for “prime facie” material suggesting that they abused their positions to “illegally” appoint Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers and other acquaintances to the DCW.

The court observed that the appointments were made in an “opaque manner” without taking in applications from other eligible candidates. Moreover, it stated that these posts were created without seeking sanctions against rules and regulations of grant-in-aid by the government and that the remunerations were also increased “arbitrarily”.

The others accused in the case apart from Maliwal are former DCW members — Promila Gupta, Sarika Chaudhary and Farheen Malick.

Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh ordered that the charges be framed against the accused under Indian Penal Code, IPC sections — 120B (criminal conspiracy), 13(1) (d) (criminal misconduct by public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

ThePrint has reached out to Maliwal. The story will be updated with her response.

Illegal appointments, salaries, no transparency

The case dates back to 2016 when former BJP MLA and party’s Delhi vice president, Barkha Shukla Singh, filed a complaint with the ACB. She alleged that several individuals associated with AAP had been appointed to the women’s rights body, violating the rules and without any transparency or public information about the vacancies and granting them benefits.

In her complaint, Singh pointed out three such persons associated with AAP who were appointed to DCW posts for different amounts of remuneration. Moreover, she also attached a list of some 85 people, with links to AAP, who were allegedly appointed to the women’s right body.

An FIR was lodged on 19 September 2016 against her complaint. According to the chargesheet filed in the case, DCW didn’t provide the relevant information to the Ministry of Women and Child Development in spite of personal visits and written requests by the ministry staff. The chargesheet also mentioned that although during investigation the DCW claimed that interviews were conducted for recruitment, no record of candidates or the details of date, place and time of the exam was supplied.

Moreover, according to the chargesheet, no advertisements were published for these posts except for the post of Legal Counsellors, which was put up on the DCW website on 26 April 2016, even though the person at this post was appointed prior to the date.

The document also stated that the salaries of these “illegal appointments” were “enhanced arbitrarily and illegally, at the cost of public money and the government exchequer”.

It was further claimed that through this, the “legitimate” rights of deserving candidates were violated to “favour a particular class of persons”.

The investigation found that 90 appointments were made from August 2015 to August 2016 – 71 on contracts and 16 for women helpline service ‘Dial 181’. No record for the remaining three appointees were found.

“After all, none of the three accused besides A1 (Swati Maliwal) ever objected to or gave a dissenting note to the illegal appointments. Rather the decisions were claimed to have been arrived at unanimously in those meetings,” the court observed.

The court noted that just because DCW had been pursuing the Delhi government to fill up the vacant posts, which “weren’t timely complied”, it doesn’t give the woman’s rights body “any right to make arbitrary appointments”.


Also read:  “It’s AAP’s fraud” Former Delhi Commission for Women chief on appointments in rights body


 

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