Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta at the Assembly on Monday.
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Monday tabled two Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) reports in the Assembly on the performance of the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. However, there was no discussion on the reports. With this, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has tabled 10 out of 14 pending CAG reports on AAP’s governance.
The first report, titled ‘Welfare of Building and Other Construction Workers’, pointed out several shortcomings in the schemes for construction workers, including unreliable data, duplication of registered workers, and discrepancies in the cess collected from builders for workers’ welfare.
The Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board (DBOCWWB) is already facing an Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) probe over registration of “ghost workers”.
The other CAG report, titled ‘State Finances for the year 2023-24’, highlighted a 55.30% fall in revenue surplus in one year — ₹14,457 crore in 2022-23 to ₹6,462 crore in 2023-24.
The report also noted a “continuous mismatch” between receipts and expenditure, indicating a “rising fiscal stress”.
Responding to CAG’s findings regarding the welfare of construction workers, AAP said that Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena and the BJP-led Centre should admit “that they failed in their primary duty of vigilance and posted corrupt officers in sensitive positions”.
‘Many loopholes’
About the registration of workers with the DBOCWWB, the report said, “The availability of duplicate images, images with no faces, and multiple registrations of the same face indicates several loopholes in the registration process.”
In its audit spanning four years up to March 2023, the CAG also identified “huge differences” in the records of cess collectors, district records and the board regarding the total cess collection.
“The difference in figures of the cess as per district records and as per the board for four years amounted to ₹204.95 crore. The differences were not reconciled. The department did not maintain a reconciled database of cess assessed, collected and remitted,” stated the report.
A Delhi government official said the board had responded to the CAG’s findings with a “point-by-point” rebuttal, which was not included in the report.
“The discrepancies in data were due to a shift to a newer portal for workers created by the National Informatics Centre. The differences in cess collections were due to some builders depositing the money to the district office and others directly to the board’s bank account,” the official added.
The official added that the performance audit has neither found any ‘ghost worker’ in the system nor any embezzlement.
L-G to blame: AAP
In a statement, AAP said, “Right from 2015, the BJP-appointed L-G appointed his favourite officers at sensitive positions in the government. It was the BJP-appointed L-G who headed the Vigilance and ACB departments. It was the primary duty of the L-G to prevent corruption.”
Published – August 05, 2025 01:48 am IST
