A magisterial court on Friday asked the police to apprise it of the action taken by it on a complaint against chief minister Sheila Dikshit and transport minister Arvi-nder Singh Lovely for alleged corruption in grant of fitness certificate to commercial vehicles.
Metropolitan magistrate Neeraj Gaur asked the anti-corruption branch to file an action-taken-report by July 4, detailing the steps it has taken on the complaint filed by RTI activist Vivek Garg.
Besides Ms Dikshit and Mr Lovely, the complaint also named former transport commissioner R.K. Verma and a company, which was granted contract for lane tests of commercial vehicles, M/s ESP India.
Mr Garg, through his counsel Vivek Gupta, told the court that the government gave away the contract for lane test of commercial vehicles for fitness certificate to a private firm without inviting any tender. “Due to corrupt and malafide intentions of the said ministers (Dikshit and Lovely), officer (R.K. Verma) and company (ESP India), no tender bid was called,” he said.
Earlier the whole process was being done by the transport department but now the said private company does the test for `400 per vehicle, he added. “After the vehicle clears the test, the transport department issues a fitness certificate, for which a separate fees of `100 is charged from each commercial vehicle.”