Next to lush Nehru Park, a bungalow cleared by DJB's ex-CEO in 2015... and still occupied by him

NEW DELHI: In a walled-off corner of the lush Nehru Park is a prime parcel of land, adjacent to the Capital's green lung and so enmeshed in it that it's hard to tell them apart

- Alok KN Mishra

On this plot, owned by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), and measuring around 12 acres, stood a clutch of houses for junior employees of the body responsible for supplying water to the city's millions. A smattering of infrastructure-an operator cabin, a pump house and a reservoir - also stood there for years, even as one of Lutyens Delhi's most select neighbourhoods, Chanakyapuri, slowly grew around the site.

Turn to 2015. That year, an internal proposal made its way to the table of the then DJB CEO, asking the organisation to demolish six old quarters and instead build a Type-6 bungalow, reserved usually for the highest echelons of the bureaucracy, and four smaller units. The then CEO approved the proposal but was transferred in six months, long before the authority completed the work.

Now, turn to 2023. The house, completed in 2016, has had only one occupant since -- Sajjan Singh Yadav, the same former DJB CEO and 1995-batch IAS officer from Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre, who cleared the proposal. And Yadav, who now works as an additional secretary in the ministry of finance, continues to live there.

While there may be no broken laws or technical violations, the unusual chain of events cements the perception of entitlement that some bureaucrats another DJB chief allegedly razed a 15th-century monument to build himself a mansion appear to carry.

Welcome to the best-located house in Delhi, in the heart of the country's diplomatic enclave, with one of the capital's best parks as its backyard.

To get to the house, we walked from the Palika Services Officers Institute (PSOI) Club all along Nehru Park's boundary to a small lane that cuts into the park and leads to a temple. From here, we walked on, which no one else is likely to because the road looks like it is going nowhere. The lane leads to a gate covered with a plastic sheet.

There is no signboard.