NEW DELHI: Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken on Friday attacked the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government for "compromising national security" by giving the contract of installing 1.5 lakh CCTV cameras in the Capital to a Chinese company, and demanded Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's resignation over the alleged scam.
Maken also claimed that the Chinese government-run Hikvision was included in the vendor list of the Defence Ministry's firm Bharat Electronics (BEL) which was "dangerous" for security of the country.
"Our direct allegation is that due to petty corruption, the Arvind Kejriwal government compromised with national security by giving contract for installing 1.5 lakh CCTV cameras in Delhi to Hikvision, which is a Chinese central government company," Maken told reporters here.
He also presented a purported transcript of a conversation involving a Delhi Congress leader and an official of Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd., Chandra Shekhar, in which the latter accepted getting the order from the Delhi government's Public Works Department (PWD) for installing CCTV cameras in the Capital.
Chandra Shekhar is the Delhi-NCR branch manager of Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd, a subsidiary of Hikvision in India
"The AAP dispensation is claiming that the contract for CCTV camera installation has been given to public sector unit BEL.
"But, the first tender was rejected because Hikvision was not in the vendor list of BEL. Later on BEL list was updated in fourth quarter of 2017-18 and Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd. was included in it along with other vendors," the Delhi Congress chief said..