New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday alleged that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has broken “all records of corruption” after the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India reportedly flagged the “very high” construction cost of the Dwarka Expressway.
According to media reports, the CAG audit report on the implementation of Phase-I of ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’ highway projects has flagged how the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) decision to go for an elevated carriageway on the Haryana portion of the Dwarka Expressway pushed up the construction cost to Rs 251 crore per kilometer from Rs 18.2 crore per kilometer.
“The Modi government has broken all the records of corruption in the past 75 years,” Kejriwal charged in a post on X, earlier known as Twitter, sharing a screenshot of a media report on the CAG report.
Addressing a press conference at the AAP headquarters here, party Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson Sanjay Singh also targeted Modi over the media report and said his government is the “most corrupt” since independence.
“The Narendra Modi government constructed the road (Dwarka Expressway) at the cost of Rs 250 crore per kilometer while it was to be constructed at the rate of Rs 18 crore per kilometer,” he said, citing the CAG report.
Under the ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’, a total of 75,000 kilometers of roads were to be constructed at the rate of Rs 15 crore per kilometer, Singh said.
“But the Narendra Modi government increased the cost to Rs 25 crore per kilometer,” he claimed.
“This government has committed a scam worth Rs 7.5 lakh crore in the Bharatmala project,” Singh charged and asked the prime minister to stop talking about his government’s commitment to end corruption in the country.
The AAP MP also alleged that industrialist Gautam Adani is the “biggest beneficiary” in the project with his companies engaged in the implementation of the road construction projects under the ‘Bharatmala Pariyojna’ in various states including Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat.
