Delhi's Anti-Corruption Branch arrested six people on Tuesday evening over a tender at the Delhi Jal Board, the city's water utility. Among them is Satyendar Jain, a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party who was Delhi's water minister when the alleged offences occurred.
The contract was for upgrading sewage treatment plants. The first information report was filed on 11 May 2024, after a complaint from the Delhi government's Directorate of Vigilance alleging large-scale irregularities, manipulation of the tender conditions, and criminal conspiracy. The six are charged under sections 7, 7A, 9 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and sections 420, 409, 418 and 120-B of the penal code.
The five arrested alongside Jain are named in both accounts we read: Udit Prakash Rai, a civil service officer and the utility's former chief executive; Ankit Srivastava, a former contractual consultant to the board; Nagendra Yadav, proprietor of AN Enterprises; Raja Kumar Kurra, who owns Euroteck Environment; and Pankaj Verma, proprietor of Srijanhar.
What the agency says it found is specific to how the tender was written. The conditions allegedly favoured Euroteck and gave it an undue advantage. The board skipped a proposed pilot study, left out essential parameters for treated effluent, and put in restrictive conditions on the technology and the media to be used. The agency says it recovered electronic communication between public servants, private companies and intermediaries about conditions that were later added to the tender notice, and that it traced about 1.52 crore rupees moving from AN Enterprises into accounts held by Rai and his relatives, money it alleges was used to buy property.
This is not Jain's first time in custody. The Enforcement Directorate arrested him in May 2022 in a money-laundering case involving four companies associated with him. He spent close to eighteen months inside before a Delhi court granted him bail in October 2023.
Why it is on the board
It came to us on two lenses, and neither of them was a newspaper. It was running at 1,352 views an hour on video and was third in search trends when we collected. Our two Indian reading lists, added this morning, did not have it — they were on a party reshuffle and an immigration detention instead.
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