Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday met Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal, along with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, to discuss the compulsory retirement of corrupt officials and directed his Ministers to prepare a list of such officials in all departments.

Discussions were also held with Chief Secretary Vijay Dev. “This will be in line with the Central government’s initiative of retiring such officers under Fundamental Rule 56[J] of Central Civil Services [Pension] Rules, 1972,” Mr. Kejriwal said in a statement. The L-G had on July 4 tweeted that he had directed the DDA Vice-Chairman, Police Commissioner and Municipal Commissioners to take action under this rule in order to weed out “dead wood”.

Expressing a “zero tolerance policy” towards corrupt officials and corruption, he said that without agencies like the Anti-Corruption Bureau in Delhi, he was restricted to complaining about such officials to the L-G. Expanding on this, he said that during the last four-and-a-half years, the Delhi government has come across officials who opposed public welfare policies for “extraneous considerations” and harmed the interests of Delhi and that a thorough probe into their acts of “omission and commission” was required.

He also pointed to a “major crackdown” against officials undertaken during his first stint as the Chief Minister in 2013-14. During the current tenure as well, the government believed, such officials were ruining the various welfare schemes for the people of Delhi and filling their own coffers, he said.