Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena sent a 14-page legal notice to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its five leaders — Atishi Singh, Durgesh Pathak, Saurabh Bhardwaj, Sanjay Singh and Jasmine Shah — for levelling “false, derogatory and malicious allegations”, spreading “fake news” and running a “motivated propaganda to malign his image”.
The notice asked the AAP and the five leaders to issue a press release directing all members of AAP to “cease and desist from spreading and circulating false, defamatory malicious and unsubstantiated statements” against the Lieutenant Governor and furnish proof that they have done it within a period of 48 hours of receipt of the notice.
“If the AAP and its leaders to whom the notice has been issued fail to do so, further legal action will be taken,” it states.
The AAP, meanwhile, issued a statement saying: “If he [the Lieutenant Governor] has done no wrong, why is he so scared of a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raid and investigation? Why doesn’t he offer himself for an independent inquiry?”
The party further said: “He should stop threatening people. He has done so much corruption in the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), that now he is trying to stop its exposure by threatening people…But he cannot silence our voice. We will keep raising our voice against corruption. We have zero tolerance against corruption.”
‘FANTASTICAL IMAGINATION, MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY’
Saxena took on the AAP leaders for their allegation that a “scam” of Rs 1,400 crore happened in the KVIC during the period of demonetisation. The allegations of the AAP leaders, according to the LG’s office, have been trashed as a figment of “fantastical imagination and mathematical impossibility by quoting figures from the Annual Report of KVIC for the year 2016-17”.
The legal notice says: “It may be known, that the total Khadi sale across the country during 2016-17 was Rs 2,146.60 Cr as per KVIC Annual Report 2016-17. There were only 7 Departmental Store Outlets (DSOs) of KVIC, sale from which was Rs 173.58 Cr during the entire year of 2016-17, while the remaining was sale done through independent Khadi Institution stores and franchisees. Out of sale of Rs 173.58 Cr from these 7 DSOs during the year, Rs 99.35 Cr was through retail sales and the remaining was through whole sale and Government supplies. Since the period under demonetisation was from 9.11.2016 to 31.12.2016, therefore on a pro-rata basis, retails sales worth approximately only Rs 14.43 Cr (actual may vary) took place through these 7 DSOs during the period of demonetisation. Hence, by any stretch of imagination, whatsoever, the figure of Rs 1400 Cr is not only incompatible with real and unquestionable figures duly recorded in the books of accounts but also an incomprehensible mathematical impossibility even if one were to take into account, the actual sales of the entire year which amounted to just Rs 173.58 Cr, from 7 DSOs. (All figures are from the KVIC Annual Report 2016-17, available on KVIC’s Website).”
The legal notice further said that the “indulgence of AAP and its leaders in such a scandalous smear campaign against Shri Saxena, is solely with the aim of deflecting and diverting attention of the people from the gross failure of the AAP Government in Delhi, their exposé in the recently unearthed Excise and Classroom scam coupled with the appreciation gained by the Lt. Governor for the ‘extraordinary work done by him in the past three months serving as the LG of Delhi”.
LG’S WORK MENTIONED IN NOTICE
Interestingly, the legal notice makes a mention of all issues that Saxena has been pointing out over the past three months such as “impropriety and rampant corruption” in building classrooms as pointed out in the CVC report, “flagrant violation and deliberate procedural lapses” in the Delhi Excise policy among others and juxtaposes the same with the steps that the LG has taken to discharge his Constitutional duty.
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The legal notice says, “… the present smear campaign is nothing but bestial vendetta against my Client whose actions have unveiled, amongst other things, rampant irregularities and corruption by some key leaders of AAP.”
Interestingly, the legal notice also makes a mention of the steps that the LG has taken for the people of Delhi such as “removal of garbage mounds in Delhi, and scientific and financially viable disposal of legacy waste, cleaning of Yamuna river, improvement of the financial health of Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi Development Authority”, among others.
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