The Delhi government has sealed the office of the state vigilance department’s special secretary, YVVJ Rajasekhar, and has begun looking into a raft of allegations, including of corruption, against the officer, according to people aware of the matter, days after the Capital’s elected administration said he had been accused of extortion and graft. The officer has been at the centre of a controversy since earlier this week when he was divested of duties and ordered to hand over all files, and him alleging that some of the files were copied by unknown people shortly after he was shunted from his role.
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People aware of the matter shared new details that add a murky twist to the saga, citing a legal notice sent on May 12 by a Delhi-based NGO that accused Rajasekhar of “corruption, forgery and harassment”, as well as of “threatening people”.
“The NGO has furnished lots of proof against the IAS officer, citing investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) investigations that he has been named in,” said the official, asking not to be named.
Among these were his alleged role in a CNG fitness certificate scam, an exercise to seal polluting industrial units for he was purportedly removed, and an ACB report that allegedly said Rajasekhar should not be appointed to a sensitive post in the future, according to the NGO’s legal notice.
HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the allegations the NGO has levelled against Rajasekhar.
{{/usCountry}}HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the allegations the NGO has levelled against Rajasekhar.
{{/usCountry}}Rajasekhar issued a 150-page rebuttal as part of his letter sent on Wednesday, denying the allegations. In the letter, he called the allegations “baseless and mala fide” and said they were not accepted by the agencies.
Delhi services minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said the government has taken cognisance of the complaint. “The department is assessing the complaint, and appropriate action will be accordingly taken,” he said. Bharadwaj on Monday ordered his department to withdraw all work assigned to Rajasekhar, a 2012-batch IAS officer, reportedly after being made cognisant of the allegations against him. This, in turn, came days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government prevailed in the Supreme Court in its tussle against the Centre in its battle for control of the Delhi services department and the state’s administrative machinery.
The top court on Thursday ruled that the elected government of Delhi could appoint or transfer officers in all departments, except those concerning land, police and public order. It also underlined that the Capital’s lieutenant governor is bound by the “aid and advice” of the state council of ministers.
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Hours after that decision, the AAP government ordered the removal of services secretary Ashish More from his position, just as chief minister Arvind Kejriwal warned of a “major overhaul” in the city’s administrative set-up. The legal notice sent by the NGO Abhinav Samaj to Kejriwal and Bharadwaj alleges Rajasekhar was transferred from Goa to Delhi in 2022 “on purpose, to trouble the AAP government.”
The notice also flagged that when Rajasekhar was serving as the estate director of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), a senior female IAS officer who worked in the same agency complained he was openly indulging in an organised criminal culture of “harassment and levelling threats”.