After coming out of jail, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said his party’s government in Punjab had sent a corrupt minister to jail. But the former minister, Vijay Singla, has been actively working for the party since the Lok Sabha election campaign started. In his second speech after his release from jail, Kejriwal said on Saturday, “In Punjab, we came to know that our minister was demanding money. Nobody from the Opposition or the media knew about it. We sent our minister to jail.” Apart from this former minister, another AAP MLA facing corruption charges, Amit Rattan Kotfatta, has also been campaigning. Both the MLAs are campaigning for AAP Bathinda candidate and minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian, who is taking on three-time MP and former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the SAD. Both Singla and Kotfatta attended Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s election rally at Jhunir in Mansa on May 6. Kotfatta also attended Mann’s roadshow in Bathinda. Singla, who is the Mansa MLA, has been actively participating in Khudian’s election campaign since the very first day. But Kotfatta, who is the Bathinda Rural MLA, joined the campaign only recently. Two months after forming the government, Chief Minister Mann said on May 25, 2022 that he had sacked his then health minister, Vijay Singla, for allegedly seeking a “1 per cent cut in tender allotment and purchase of goods related to the department”. Singla was later arrested by police under the Prevention of Corruption Act. His arrest was presented by the party as evidence of its tough stance on corruption. A year later, on February 24, 2023, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau arrested Kotfatta in a bribery case, days after his alleged close aide Rashim Garg was nabbed in the case. A chargesheet has been submitted in court in the case against Kotfatta, but Singla’s case has been put on the back burner as no chargesheet has been submitted even after almost two years.
