The Office of the Labour Commissioner, Delhi, does not have any record of the cases in which laborers were injured or died while working on the Commonwealth Games sites. The labour commissioner’s office has given this information in reply to an RTI application filed in August.

The query sought details including the number of accident cases at the CWG sites, the number of cases where the laborers got injured or died, the name and address of these workers and amount of compensation paid to them.

The labour commissioner’s office transferred the application to Anil Kumar, chief inspector, factories, and not to the district labour office that keeps all the details of such cases.

“No record related to death and injuries of workers is available with us,” says the reply to the RTI application filed on August 12 by Indrajeet Jha of People’s Union of Democratic Rights (PUDR), a Delhi based civil society organisation.

“This is bizarre. The department where the RTI application was transferred has nothing to do with the Commonwealth Games,” said Moushumi Basu of PUDR.

Interestingly, the same office earlier submitted in the Delhi High Court that as per its records, at least 48 workers died on CWG sites and more than Rs one crore was paid in compensation.

However, the affidavit given to the court, a copy of which is with Governance Now, does not mention the list of workers and details which were asked in the RTI query.

The RTI application was filed to get more details of the beneficiaries of the compensation.