The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) demands the immediate resignation of union health minister Dr Harshvardhan failing which the Prime Minister should sack him for his illegal action of having approved the shunting out of whistleblower officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi from the post of Chief Vigilance Officer of AIIMS.
It is shameful that the health minister is defending his shocking action to save his skin, but either he is ill-informed or is deliberately trying to mislead the nation for his blatant compromise with corruption.
AS the CVO of AIIMS, Chaturvedi had recommended CBI probes in scams involving top officials of AIIMS and the AAP is making public nine of these important cases.
Dr Harshvardhan’s action flies directly in the face of Prime Minister’s recent statement that he will not allow anyone to indulge in corruption and loot. There are enough indications of involvement of more ministers in the AIIMS issue and the AAP will reveal more details in coming days.
What is further damning is that the NDA government has even surpassed the record of the previous UPA government in the harassment of this honest officer.
In the previous UPA regime, after being transferred 12 times in five years by the Congress state government of Haryana, which also implicated him in half a dozen false cases and even suspended him, the Prime Minister’s Office had intervened to get him a central deputation and the President had quashed his suspension orders.
Now, when Chaturvedi’s tenure was fixed till June 2016, on which basis has he been divested of the CVO’s responsibility ?
The AAP is making public the letter written by the health ministry on May 23 to AIIMS, in which the ministry has mentioned that BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP JP Nadda had objected to Chaturvedi’s appointment, but this objection was overruled since the appointment was as per the rules .
On what basis has Dr Harshvardhan forced the health ministry to do a u-turn and reverse its stand within three months ?
Why Mr Nadda wanted Chaturvedi out from the CVO’s post was because on his recommendation, the CBI had registered a case of corruption against Mr Vineet Chaudhary, a Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS officer, when he was posted as Deputy Director at AIIMS. (Details attached with this press release along with other cases probed by Chaturvedi as CVO).
The NDA government’s latest action is the third suspect decision of its direct compromise with corruption.
Earlier, on July 23, the union home ministry issued a completely unjustified notification to restrict the powers of Delhi’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), in a desperate bid to prevent it from probing the Rs 54,000 crore natural gas pricing scam involving two former ministers of the UPA government.
This was followed by the union petroleum ministry’s affidavit in the Delhi High Court, where it refused to back the ONGC stand that the Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) was stealing gas from its fields in the KG D6 basin off Andhra Pradesh coast.
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