Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva on Tuesday accused the Aam Aadmi Party leaders of creating confusion to cover up corruption during their government’s tenure.
Sachdeva said that when ED teams conducted searches at former Delhi minister and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj’s residence on Tuesday regarding the alleged hospital construction scam, the party leaders claimed that he was not a minister when the decision to build the hospitals was made.
Sachdeva said it may be true what AAP leaders are saying, but the real question is whether AAP can deny the fact that Bharadwaj was a minister during the actual construction of the hospitals.
He said that the BJP asks AAP leaders to answer whether it is not true that their government failed to complete the construction of even a single announced hospital.
The Delhi BJP chief claimed that the reason behind the non-completion of these hospitals was that most of the announcements were made with half-baked plans, and only basic building funds had been allocated.
He alleged that the previous government merely provided a budget for laying bricks and announced the construction of hospitals, but did not allocate any funds for essential components like electricity, water infrastructure, operation theatres, wards, or other medical infrastructure.
According to the BJP leader’s claims, during the Kejriwal government’s tenure, there was a continuous pattern of approving small-scale tenders and emergency purchases at the ministerial level to keep construction going.
He alleged that during this entire “fund allocation game,” Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia, and Bharadwaj held ministerial posts and played key roles.
The Delhi BJP chief questioned AAP and its leaders on whether Bharadwaj, who is dismissing the ED probe as fake, will take an oath and say that he never gave any approval as health minister for emergency or additional tenders related to hospital construction.
Sachdeva stated that “who was minister when” does not matter here, because this is about investigating a scam in hospital construction, not about who made the decision to build them.
He further said that this is not just a case of alleged loot in the construction of 11 permanent hospitals, but the people of Delhi want to know from Kejriwal why not even one permanent hospital was completed, and why the seven temporary hospitals announced during COVID-19 were never completed either.