Reiterating his support to the power subsidy for the poor, Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena said her on Friday that the amounts being given to discoms should be duly audited to ensure non-pilferage.

In a development that is bound to trigger a spar between the Lieutenant Governor’s (LG) office and the Delhi government over alleged subsidy to discoms, Saxena slammed the Kejriwal Government for not conducting an audit of Rs 13,549 crore given to private DISCOMs during the past six years.

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According to a statement issued by the LG office, the LG questioned the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government for not invoking Section 108 of the Electricity Act, 2003, to make it compulsory for Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to audit discoms till now, while underlining the fact that audit by CAG-empanelled auditors cannot and should not be considered as substitute to Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) audit.

Saxena expressed his surprise over the government’s appeal in the Supreme Court against the high court order quashing CAG audit of discoms pending for more than seven years and asked the government to expedite the same by filing appeal for urgent hearing.

On March 26, an LG office source alleged that the AAP Government and its functionaries were making baseless, false and misleading statements after being caught red-handed while giving undue financial favours to private discoms.

The source further said the chief secretary submitted a report to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as well as Saxena, pointing out that the power department is not following the statutory advice of Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) on “subsidies being paid to the discoms”.