High court raps MCD for concealing facts on ghost staff

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The Delhi High Court Wednesday slammed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) for “concealing facts” in its affidavit on money paid to ‘ghost employees’.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Mukta Gupta said: “This affidavit conceals everything and reveals nothing. It does not disclose facts. This is a very nicely drafted affidavit concealing the facts by the agency.”

Appearing for the MCD, counsel Ravi Shankar Prasad said 22,853 ‘ghost’ employees were found after the bio-metric system was installed.

The bench asked counsel to file an affidavit by May 26 on the salary paid to such a large number of employees who never existed.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) of voluntary organisation Jagrook Welfare Society through counsel C.S. Parashar, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry or an independent agency’s probe into the scam.

After a media report in November last year, the MCD revealed that there were 22,853 gardeners and sweepers as ‘ghost employees’ on its payrolls and admitted that it was an administrative lapse which was costing the civic body a whopping Rs.17 crore every month.

A probe was ordered after the biometric system of attendance, introduced by the civic body in August 2008 and later extended to all MCD zones, brought out the gap in the data given by disbursing officers and the number of employees enrolled.

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