Within months of taking charge of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the BJP has once again mired the civic body in misfeasance, with fresh allegations of corruption emerging around a major real estate project. The latest expose, brought to light by AAP’s Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the MCD Ankush Narang, pointed out that BJP Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh had pushed a proposal designed to benefit a private builder—Asteroid Shelters Homes Pvt Ltd—by artificially inflating the value of their project by ₹150–₹200 crores.
According to Ankush Narang, BJP’s Mayor tabled a proposal in the MCD House to remove a garbage dump and a government office situated directly in front of the company’s project in the Lawrence Road Industrial Area. The removal, which would cost a mere ₹60–₹70 lakhs, would dramatically boost the market value of the builder’s property. “Why the undue haste to table this proposal? Whose interests are being served—those of the public or those of private profiteers?” Ankush Narang asked, asserting that the corruption in the proposal is blatant and deliberate.
Addressing a press conference at the AAP headquarters, MCD LoP Ankush Narang revealed that a dubious proposal was tabled and passed in the very first House chaired by newly elected BJP Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh—aimed at benefiting a private real estate company, Asteroid Shelters Homes Private Limited, at the expense of public infrastructure. “This proposal was hastily tabled and carried Raja Iqbal Singh’s signature. What was the urgency in pushing through a file that so blatantly benefits a private company?” questioned Ankush Narang.
The MCD LoP noted that the proposal concerns Asteroid Shelters Homes Pvt Ltd, a 12-year-old private firm constructing a housing society on Block A, Plots 4 to 8 in the Lawrence Road Industrial Area. Right across from the construction site—barely 300 feet away—stand two public utilities: an MCD garbage dump (dhalav) and an office of the Department of Environmental Management Services (DEMS) Department. The proposal called for both these public assets to be shifted, with the company offering to cover the estimated cost of ₹60–70 lakh for relocation. “But this minor expense would lead to a windfall of ₹150–200 crore in real estate valuation for the company,” Ankush Narang said. “And that is the real motive.”
He further pointed to the sixth point of the proposal, which clearly admits that no such request from a private entity has ever been approved in the history of MCD. Yet, despite this precedent, the proposal claimed that relocating the dump and department office would have no adverse effect on sanitation services. It also openly acknowledged that the sole purpose of the move was to enhance the company’s real estate value.
Ankush Narang revealed that the MCD Commissioner himself raised concerns, stating that Delhi residents do not want dumps shifted near their homes. He warned that approving this request could open the floodgates for similar demands from other developers. “The proposal even admits that any future requests must be evaluated individually. So on what merit did Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh approve this one?” Ankush Narang demanded.
“This is the first known instance in MCD’s history where public land use has been altered purely at the behest of a private housing society. This decision is nothing short of a gift to a private company,” he added.
Ankush Narang further explained that dump relocation provisions are generally invoked only in cases of public utility—such as metro construction or road widening projects—to prevent inconvenience to the public. “But in this case, there is no such public need. Yet the proposal was tabled and passed in record time,” he said.
He highlighted the widespread neglect of similar sanitation issues across Delhi. “There are over 100 such dumps in the city. I am the councillor from Ward 87, where people suffer daily due to the stench and unhygienic conditions from the local dump. The same goes for Councillor Puneet Rai’s Ward 91. Has the Mayor moved to shift those dumps? No. But he’s quick to act when a private company stands to gain crores.”
Calling the bypassing of due process a gross abuse of office, Ankush Narang noted that any such proposal dealing with MCD property or structural relocation must first be vetted by the Standing Committee. “But this file never reached the committee. Instead, Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh overstepped institutional norms and had the proposal approved through brute majority. This is a blatant violation of MCD protocol, executed to serve the financial interests of Asteroid Shelters Homes Pvt Ltd.”
He contrasted this hasty action with the inaction in more urgent matters: “When garbage collection fails in the Central Zone, the BJP says it needs Standing Committee approval for tenders. Streets are filled with waste, yet no proposal is brought to address that. But a proposal to inflate a private builder’s profits? That moves fast.”
“This is textbook corruption,” Ankush Narang asserted. “It has taken less than 45 days for the BJP to return to its old ways in the MCD.”
Concluding the press conference, Ankush Narang posed a direct question to the Mayor: “As Leader of Opposition, I ask Raja Iqbal Singh—when the Commissioner clearly wrote that the proposal serves only to boost a builder’s property value, and that there is no precedent for such a request in MCD history—what was the compulsion to table this file? What interest did you and your party have in helping a private company secure a real estate windfall using public land? The people of Delhi deserve answers.”
