Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Friday criticized the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for creating a disturbance over the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, alleging that “all this drama is just an excuse.” The CAG report flagged a Rs 2,000 crore loss due to the AAP government’s liquor policy.
“All this drama is just an excuse because they could not listen to the facts written in the CAG reports… I will not let even a single penny of the state treasury go to waste,” said Gupta.
She also accused AAP of misusing Delhi’s tax revenue for election campaigns in other states. Gupta claimed that AAP leaders are unsettled by the release of CAG reports exposing their alleged misdeeds.
“They collected tax from Delhi and used it for elections in other states… We are releasing all the CAG reports one by one, so they (AAP leaders) are rattled by it. They cannot dare sit in front of us in the house and listen to their deeds,” Gupta added.
The Delhi CM claimed AAP leaders couldn’t face the truth and staged drama around the removal of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s portrait. She stressed that the Narendra Modi government has shown more respect to Ambedkar than any previous administration.
“They just needed an excuse to get out of the house, so they picked up this issue of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s portrait… The Narendra Modi government has ensured that Babasaheb Ambedkar gets his due respect, which no government could do,” said Gupta.
On Tuesday, 21 AAP MLAs were suspended for disrupting Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena’s inaugural address by raising slogans against the alleged removal of portraits of BR Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh from Chief Minister Rekha Gupta’s office in the assembly.
Gupta’s remarks followed the tabling of a CAG report on Delhi’s health infrastructure in the Assembly on Friday, which highlighted severe shortcomings, including staff shortages, inadequate facilities, and poor healthcare management.
The 2025 CAG Report on ‘Public Health Infrastructure and Management of Health Services’ (Report No. 3 of 2024) was presented in the Legislative Assembly of Delhi on February 28, 2025.
The audit assessed the availability of health infrastructure, manpower, machinery, and equipment in health institutions, the adequacy of allocated financial resources, and the efficiency of health service management in NCTD. The report focused on secondary and tertiary hospitals from 2016-17 to 2021-22.
The report found a 21 per cent staff shortage in the Health and Family Welfare Department of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) and a 30 per cent shortage of specialists, including super-specialist doctors. It also pointed out the lack of essential medicines, equipment, and consumables in hospitals.
Many hospitals lacked basic facilities such as dietary and radiological diagnostic services, and waiting times for major surgeries ranged from 2-3 months to 6-8 months.
The report identified additional issues like delays in the empanelment of drug testing laboratories, staff shortages in the Drugs Control Department, and a lack of hospital and laboratory accreditation.
Waiting times for major surgeries in the Surgery and Burn & Plastic Surgery Departments of LNH were recorded at 2-3 months and 6-8 months, respectively. Meanwhile, six out of 12 modular OTs in RGSSH and all seven modular OTs in JSSH were idle due to manpower shortages.
Many ambulances under the Centralised Accident and Trauma Services (CATS) were found to be operating without essential equipment and devices.
