Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena on Monday wrote to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over the "inordinate delay" in tabling four Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports from 2017 to 2021 and asked him to refrain from such a practice to avoid "wastage" of public money.
The L-G asked the CM to ensure that in future, reports of the CAG relating to the Delhi Government are laid in time before the Legislative Assembly and necessary action on the observations in them is taken in a time-bound manner to avoid wastage and misuse of public money.
In his letter, Saxena said it was not clear if tabling all audit reports in the Assembly in one go would give enough opportunity for discussion and deliberations on the CAG’s observations, which were "serious in nature" and called for in-depth introspection by all.
"It is observed that many irregularities pointed out in the above reports are of serious nature requiring urgent attention. Inordinate delay in laying the audit reports before the assembly not only delayed timely, corrective action but also indirectly resulted in perpetuating stated deficiencies, thus defeating the purpose of the audit in terms of ensuring efficiency, accountability and compliance with laid down rules and procedures," Saxena said in the letter.
The letter pointed out that some State Government companies with an investment of Rs 6929.93 crore had accumulated losses of Rs 31,724 crore.
The losses in the Delhi Power Company Limited were to the tune of Rs 1360 crore and Delhi Transco Limited incurred losses of Rs 12016 crore while the Delhi Transport Corporation had losses of Rs 29,143 crore.
The Delhi Government may consider reviewing the working of the State PSUs revival or closure. Citing these reports, the L-G said there were several irregularities in water supply, development works in unauthorised colonies and delay in execution of projects among others.
The letter said that an expenditure of Rs 260.29 crore has been incurred on laying of internal and peripheral sewer lines in 108 unauthorised colonies but these lines were lying idle as interceptor sewer project which was to act as outfall structure /trunk sewer for these sewer lines was delayed He also said CAG reports said that there were "deficiencies in preparation and approval of estimates", delay in awarding and executing works.
He said the reports observed that out of 657 water tankers used for water supply by the Delhi Jal Board, 250 tankers operated without monitoring equipment such as GPS, water level metres or flow metres or chlorine metres.
"Out of 1,797 unauthorised colonies, 1,573 colonies (88 per cent) were not provided with sewerage facilities as of March 2018 and sewage generated by these colonies flowed into storm water drains and eventually into River Yamuna in its untreated form," the L-G said.
Earlier this month, the LG Office had alleged that CAG reports for 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 titled the 'State Finances Audit Report', 'Revenue Economic, Social & General Sectors and PSUs', Social General & Economic Sectors (Non-PSUs)' and 'Finance Accounts of GNCTD' were pending with the government till the end of June. The government tabled these reports during the Monsoon Session of the Delhi assembly on July 5 after constant intervention by the LG Office. The Aam Aadmi Party, however, sought to downplay the matter, saying the LG and the BJP have "no other work except levelling baseless allegations" against Kejriwal. "The LG has been sent only for this purpose...Taking a serious view of any allegation levelled by the LG and the BJP is a waste of time," AAP's national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh told reporters when asked for his comment on the issue.