Sheila takes on BJP,wants MCD probed

In a letter to Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday,Dikshit pointed to a High Court order this month raising concerns over the scam concerning absentee employees in the agency,and urged Home officials to investigate the fraud.

“One can safely presume that such large-scale engagement of ghost employees is not possible without the complicity of various levels of administration in the MCD,” Dikshit wrote.

The Home ministry has the overall supervision of the MCD under the existing set-up,with the Delhi government having only a few token powers,with no real say over the agency’s functioning.

Dikshit’s government is pushing hard to split the MCD into five smaller autonomous units,on the broad ground that the agency is too big to manage and that the current administration has proved ineffective.

Opposition BJP,which governs the agency,has rubbished the proposal as being politically motivated and unnecessary. Even some of Dikshit’s own colleagues in the Congress have opposed the move.

Over the last two years,various unofficial estimates have suggested that at least 23,000 employees — mostly sanitation workers — listed in the MCD’s payrolls either do not exist or have never reported to work.

Delhi government counsel Najmi Waziri said in the High Court last week that the civic agency could be wasting about Rs 100 crore of taxpayers’ money every year paying salaries to such employees.

In her letter to Chidambaram,Dikshit quotes the High Court’s observations on May 4,which called the scam a fiscal disaster and a catastrophic maladministration.

The observation indicates the serious deterioration of governance in the BJP-controlled agency,Dikshit’s letter states.

“One can safely presume that such large-scale engagement of ghost employees is not possible without the complicity of various levels of administration in the MCD,” she wrote. Dikshit also urged the ministry to examine the allegations and take appropriate action against the MCD for “such a large-scale fraudulent practice which has led to loss of hundreds of crore of rupees to the exchequer”.

Dikshit’s letter on mismanagement in the MCD coincides with her sustained efforts over the last three months to split the agency and bring the smaller units under the Delhi government’s control. A committee of three Cabinet ministers recommended that the MCD be split into five units earlier this year,a proposal that needs the Home ministry’s approval to become a law.