New Delhi, April 18: A day after his appointment as Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's adviser was cancelled, Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha on Wednesday said he had returned Rs 2.50 he received as "salary" for 75 days he was on the post in 2016.
The Delhi government's General Administration Department (GAD), citing a Home Ministry letter dated April 10, on Tuesday cancelled the appointment of nine advisers and consultants in various departments, including that of Chadha as Adviser (finance).
In a letter to the Ministry, Chadha said that he was appointed to the post from January 15 to March 31 in 2016 to assist Sisodia in the preparation of the 2016-17 Budget.
"...I accept my retrospective sacking from the post I held for 75 days two years ago," he said in the letter, tagging along a draft for Rs 2.50.
He criticised Delhi bureaucrats, claiming that they were working "hand in glove" with the Bharatiya Janata Party by choice or under duress and were "uncooperative" over the Delhi government's reforms, and thus the role of advisers was "ever more important".
The nine advisers whose appointments were cancelled are Amardeep Tiwari (Media adviser to the Law Minister), Arunoday Prakash (Media Adviser to Deputy CM), Atishi Marlena (Media Adviser to Deputy CM), Dinkar Adib (OSD to Minister Satyender Jain), Ram Kumar Jha (Adviser, logistics, to Sisodia), Samir Malhotra (consultant, Satyender Jain), Prashant Saxena and Rajat Tiwari (Aide de Camps to Power Minister).
"I too was one of these young foolhardy individuals who thought they brought value to the table...," Chadha wrote in the letter.
Taking a dig at BJP leaders Sambit Patra and Shazia Ilmi over their appointment as Directors in the Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd and Engineers India Ltd respectively, the AAP leader derisively questioned if he would have been better placed at a "plump position" in public sector undertaking with "considerable pecuniary benefits".
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
