Sukhbir admits Badal’s ‘small’ share in Orbit

When asked why his father has never said as much, Sukhbir said he may not even remember it, ‘‘it’’ being ‘‘lakhs of rupees’’, Sukhbir says.

Having called reporters to rebut the charges in the FIR against ‘‘me, my dad and mom’’, Sukhbir said companies like Falcon Properties Pvt Ltd, Baj TPT Pvt Ltd, Integral Deposit Pvt Ltd and Crystalline Pvt Ltd did invest money into Resorts ‘‘but not a penny was invested by any other company after 1991.’’

But when asked about the Vigilance Bureau’s claims that companies were formed merely to channel money into Resorts, Sukhbir denied it being so, before taking a different line: ‘‘And even if it is so, what is so illegal about it?’’

He said he actually wanted to set up a hotel in Kashmir and ‘‘I was touring with Omar Abdullah to scout for hotel venture, but somehow ended up getting the land in Gurgaon.’’ Later, he said, the land got tied up in court cases before he finally got it back in 1999. ‘‘I was lucky Gurgaon land appreciation took place,’’ he said.

The man made directly an MP, then a Union minister and again the Rajya Sabha MP after losing the Lok Sabha poll, today made another revelation which may not really do credit to his father: ‘‘I had nothing to do with politics. I wanted to set up a hotel.’’

Sukhbir claimed the VB found ‘‘almost nothing’’ from the resort after a three-day scan and the project was appraised by a consortium of three banks at Rs 63 crore.