ACB raid baseless, says DCW chief

Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief, Swati Maliwal on Wednesday said that action for any case is taken within 48 hours, which earlier, used to take three to four months. She alleged that the raid at her office by the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) was “baseless” due to the “extensive work” done by DCW even on Saturdays.

“The questions were irrelevant and were related to job appointments, working of the commission and what is the reason behind the commission being open on Saturday and asked for photocopies of the files,” Maliwal said. “The appointments are same and there is no change in the system. We have given jobs to acid attack victims, orphans from Nariniketan and even to dowry victims,” she added.

The complaint was filed by former DCW Chief, Barkha Singh, Vijendra Gupta who is the Leader of the Opposition and Umesh Sehgal, the Ex- Chief Secretary of Delhi under the BJP government whose molestation case was handled by the Delhi Commission for Women.  She further added that right now the DCW has become a credible organisation and is doing a lot of work so it is sad that the former DCW chairperson Barkha Singh, who herself  in her nine-year-long tenure took up only a single case, is complaining against good work. It is interesting to add that more than 400 cases had been taken up in a single year by Swati Maliwal herself. 

“The three ganged up together and filed a complaint against us which is baseless,” she said. “We have 181 helpline for monitoring the quality of cases and also have expanded our fleet to 22 cars which started from March 8 and are reporting 60 cases per day and 22 lawyers are presently operating in all the courts in Delhi and are fulfilling the mandate of the commission,” Maliwal said. She further said that the DCW is open on Saturdays to solve the pending cases as the commission is overburdened with complaints which weren’t taken up during Shukla’s tenure and the procedure of dealing with the cases has changed as now the firsthand action is taken within 48 hours from the time of lodging the complaint. “We are here to serve the poorest of the poor in Delhi and we welcome raids and inquiries done by the ACB. We are not scared of anything as long as we are working efficiently,” Maliwal said.