Congress leader and former Union minister Ajay Maken on Sunday alleged that the actual amount spent by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to renovate chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s official residence was not ₹45 crore, as stated earlier, but was ₹171 crore.
The AAP did not respond to Maken’s allegations. However, the party has previously said that the CM residence is not a personal property, but a house allocated to the chief minister by the government.
Separately, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched 70 jan chetna sabha (public gatherings) to address the alleged irregularities in the matter, holding the first such gathering in New Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar.
Speaking at a press conference, Maken said that the amount of money spent on the renovations should also include the amount that the government spent to buy additional flats for officers whose official residences had to be either demolished or vacated for the expansion of the CM’s residential complex .
“There are four residence complexes next to the CM’s official residence. Together, these four residence complexes have 22 officers’ flats. Out of those 22, 15 were either vacated or demolished and for the remaining seven, it was instructed that they would not be re-allotted,” he alleged, adding that to compensate for these flats, the AAP government has bought 21 flats worth ₹126 crore in the Commonwealth Games Village.
Maken said the cost of these 21 flats must also be included in the total money spent on the CM’s residence, as their purchase was necessary due to the expansion of his residence. He alleged that the renovation also ignored heritage, greenery as well as the master plan of Delhi.
Meanwhile, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva on Sunday stated his party’s jan chetna sabha to highlight alleged irregularities in the renovations of the CM house.
Leader of the opposition Ramveer Singh Bidhuri, who was also present at the event, said Kejriwal had promised the public that he would live in a house with a maximum of four rooms like a common man. “Now he has made a palace by combining four kothis. He spent this amount at a time when people were running for beds, medicines, doctors and oxygen in hospitals and deaths were happening on the roads during the Corona pandemic,” he said.
AAP had earlier said that before the renovations, the CM house was in a dilapidated condition, having been built 80 years ago in 1942, and after three serious incidents, which included the ceiling of the CM’s parents’ room falling, the ceiling of CM’s bedroom collapsing, the Public Works Department (PWD) recommended the construction of a new house.