Union Minister Hardeep Puri on Monday accused the Delhi government of stalling the ITO Skywalk project for one year as it “refused to provide 20% of the funds needed for the project but was rushing to take credit once the project was completed”.
“ITO Skywalk was one of the several urban development projects that was being stalled by the AAP government in Delhi. The Urban Development Ministry then contacted the DDA that pitched in with the 20% share that was supposed to be given by the Delhi government and we managed to complete the project in less than a year,” Mr. Puri said at the inauguration of the foot overbridge.
Utilitarian project
The event was attended by Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal and BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi as well. Mr. Puri added that it pained him that “false narrative” were being created and some people who had nothing to do with the project were trying to take credit.
Mr. Baijal called the ITO Skywalk a utilitarian project as over 30,000 people would use it everyday particularly in Delhi which he said was not a cycle and pedestrian-friendly city.
“The city has been cruel to cyclist and pedestrians when it comes to planning but many underpasses and foot overbridges have also grossly underutilised,” Mr. Baijal said. He proposed that underpasses should have shops or restaurants to make them more “buzzing”.
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government contended that an amount of ₹12 crore, which was its share of expenditure towards the construction of the skywalk, was “immediately sanctioned and released”.
Sanction proof
Nagendar Sharma, media adviser to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, took to Twitter to release documents in relation to the financial approval and sanction for the project in addition to another document purportedly from the Centre stating that the Delhi government would “have to bear the 20% cost on its own”.
AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj tweeted, “.@HardeepSPuri, Either you are not briefed by your officers or you are in habit of manipulating people. This is the money paid by Govt of Delhi for ITO skywalk [sic],” in addition to releasing a document purportedly illustrating the amount disbursed by the Delhi government towards the project.
“In accordance with the 80-20% funding agreement, the Delhi government was to provide around ₹12 crore fund for the project out of the total estimated cost of around ₹54 crore. Bureaucratic queries were raised about the necessity of the project and a former Delhi PWD Secretary, now posted outside Delhi, raised queries about the need for such a project,” the Delhi government said in a statement.
Objections of the bureaucrat concerned were, according to the statement, overruled by the Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Manish Sisodia-headed Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC), which gave its approval for providing the Delhi government share of ₹12 crore for the Skywalk project. “This amount of ₹12 crore was immediately sanctioned and released by the Delhi government for the construction of the Skywalk,” the statement added.