Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinay Kumar Saxena on Wednesday decided to take legal action against AAP leaders Atishi, Saurabh Bhardwaj and Durgesh Pathak over allegations of corruption. According to LG House officials, the allegations of corruption were “highly defamatory and false”.
Saxena, while the chairman of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, has denied the allegations of the AAP MLAs of the Rs 1,400-crore scam and called it “his imagination”. Officials said that legal action will also be taken against Jasmine Shah, Vice Chairman of Delhi’s Dialogue and Development Commission.
The special session of the Delhi Assembly called by the Aam Aadmi Party has seen several disruptions over the past two days, with the trust vote sought by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal being postponed twice. Amidst all the uproar, AAP targeted Saxena and demanded his resignation and a fresh probe by the CBI and ED in the alleged Rs 1,400 crore Khadi scam.
The AAP has alleged that when Saxena was the head of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, he forced employees to exchange demonetised currencies in 2016, resulting in a Rs 1,400-crore scam. On the floor of the House, senior leader and MLA Durgesh Pathak said, “As Chairman of Khadi Commission, Vinay Kumar Saxena forced the Khadi cashier to exchange his old unaccounted notes. Khadi shops had stopped accepting old currency, but Vinay Kumar Saxena forced the cashiers to take their cash and convert it into khadi. Two Khadi cashiers exposed the scam. But Vinay Kumar Saxena investigated his allegations and suspended the cashier. Saxena dismissed the allegations to the extent that the CBI never mentioned his name in his complaint.
The CBI on Tuesday said that it has not found the role of any person other than two cashiers of Khadi Gram Udyog Bhawan, who had converted old notes of Rs 17 lakh into new notes post demonetisation. The response of the central agency comes a day after Pathak’s allegations in the Delhi Assembly.
The CBI had already filed a charge sheet against head cashiers Sanjeev Malik and Pradeep Kumar Yadav in December 2017 after conducting a thorough probe into the matter. According to the CBI, the cashier had deposited old notes worth Rs 17.07 lakh in the account of State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur at Khadi Gram Udyog Bhawan between November 9 and December 31, 2016, in violation of the instructions issued by the government.
Malik and Yadav dishonestly exchanged old notes with new ones received through sales cashiers, the CBI FIR alleges. It said that the head cashier conspired to keep the new notes and obtained pecuniary benefits through corrupt and illegal means. The FIR also alleged that he deposited black money of some suspicious officials in the bank accounts of Khadi Gram Udyog in State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, Connaught Circus branch.
(with PTI inputs)
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