Ludhiana City Centre Scam: Once a key complainant against Amarinder Singh, Navjot Singh Sidhu now says ‘situations change’
The case is coming up for hearing in a Ludhiana court on Saturday. On August 19, the Vigilance Bureau had filed a closure report in the case, giving Amarinder a clean chit and claiming there was “no scam at all, it was all fictional”.
Chandigarh: Punjab Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu along and others addressing the media persons in Chandigarh on Friday. PTI Photo(PTI6_23_2017_000123B)
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Now the Local Bodies Minister in the Amarinder Singh government, Navjot Singh Sidhu was one of the prime complainants against him over a decade in the alleged Rs 1,144 crore Ludhiana city centre ‘scam’ during Captain’s first term as the CM. The case is coming up for hearing in a Ludhiana court on Saturday. On August 19, the Vigilance Bureau had filed a closure report in the case, giving Amarinder a clean chit and claiming there was “no scam at all, it was all fictional”.
However, as per the initial inquiry report of the Vigilance (copy with The Indian Express) also submitted in the court with the closure report, Sidhu, then a BJP MP, was the prime complainant in the case along with senior BJP leader Avinash Rai Khanna. The report says that both of them had landed at Sarabha Nagar police station of Ludhiana, demanding an FIR be registered against Amarinder Singh and others.
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“The complainants included Member of Parliament Sh Navjot Singh Sidhu and Sh Avinash Rai Khanna. However, no action on the complaint was taken as per the statutory requirement of the CrPC. The complaint was against the serving CM of the state. Enquiries conducted have revealed that the selection of the bidders was wrong…”, the initial inquiry report says. When contacted on Friday, Sidhu said, “Situations change… Law is supreme and everyone in this country submits to the majesty of law. The verdict of the court is final. Let it decide.”
When contacted, Khanna, a BJP leader, said: “It was one of the biggest scams of Punjab and an independent agency should be handed over the probe now… what has happened in four months that now as per Vigilance there was no scam at all? We want to know on what basis a probe going on for 10 years is being cancelled now? How can Vigilance take a U-turn and say there is no scam?”
He, however, refused to comment on Sidhu’s U-turn. “He should know what he is saying now.”
In the 77-page closure report (copy with The Indian Express), submitted almost 10 years after the FIR was filed in the case in 2007, the Vigilance says, “There is no proof or fact to substantiate any scam in the project… CM Captain Amarinder Singh never had any ill-intention in the execution of the project”. The report also says “there is no proof of any bribe money exchanged between the representatives of the private firm Today Homes and any government official at the Hotel Park Plaza of Ludhiana as alleged”.
This re-investigation in the Ludhiana city centre ‘scam’ was carried out after Chetan Gupta, one of the accused named in FIR, filed an application for a fresh probe to Vigilance Bureau on March 7, 2017, just three days before Punjab Assembly results were announced and the Congress won.
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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