Facing ED heat, J&K ex-minister Lal Singh: Kathua strongman to party hopper, no stranger to controversy

Singh got elected as an MLA for the first time from Basohli in Kathua district as a nominee of the All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) – a breakaway group of the Congress party – in 1996, when the Assembly polls were held in J&K after a hiatus of nine years.

The Indira Congress (Tiwari) merged with the Congress after Sonia Gandhi took charge of the grand old party. Subsequently, Singh contested the 2002 Assembly election from Basohli as a Congress candidate and again won the election.

With the 2002 polls throwing a hung verdict, the Congress entered into a post-poll alliance with the then Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led PDP for government formation on the agreement that it will be headed by Sayeed with the chief minister’s post to be shared between the two allies on a rotational basis for a period of three years.

Singh was inducted as a cabinet minister in the Sayeed-led coalition government and was allocated the health and medical education portfolio. He triggered a controversy over his alleged high-handed functioning that involved surprise visits to health facilities besides pulling up doctors and para medical staff in public for “negligence” in their duties.

Following widespread resentment within the health and medical fraternity over his “unruly behaviour”, Singh was asked by the Congress leadership to quit as an MLA and contest the 2004 Lok Sabha polls from Udhampur, which he won.

In the 2004 by-election for the Basohli seat, which had fallen vacant following Singh’s election to the Lok Sabha, the Congress nominated his wife Kanta Andotra. She also won the election.

Singh got re-elected to the Lok Sabha from Udhampur in 2009 on the Congress ticket. However, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he parted ways with the party in protest against its move to field Ghulam Nabi Azad from Udhampur in his place.

Later, Singh joined the BJP and successfully contested the 2014 Assembly election on its ticket from Basohli, even though ahead of the Lok Sabha elections he had mocked the party’s then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

He was again inducted as a cabinet minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government headed by Sayeed. Following the demise of Sayeed in early January 2016, he became minister in the coalition cabinet headed by Mehbooba Mufti. Singh was allocated the forest portfolio, but he triggered a row when he allegedly threatened a delegation of Gujjars by reminding them of the violence against their community during the Partition.

Hardly had this row ended that Singh sparked another controversy by supporting the demand for a CBI inquiry made by the relatives of the accused arrested by police in connection with the alleged gang rape and subsequent murder of a minor Bakerwal girl in the forests of Rasana in Kathua in 2018.

In the wake of outrage against him, Singh was forced to quit the PDP-BJP cabinet. However, he continued his campaign to mobilise public opinion over this demand much to the discomfort of the BJP.

Later, when the BJP broke up with the PDP, resulting into the fall of Mehbooba government, Singh quit the BJP and floated his own regional party – Dogra Swabhiman Sanghathan. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he contested from Jammu as well as Udhampur, but lost deposits in both the seats.

After his ouster from the coalition ministry, trouble mounted for Singh as the then J&K government conducted raids on three factories owned by his relatives and friends for possessing medicinal raw material extracted from forests in excess of the permissible limits.

In connection with the current case against Singh, the ED raided several of his premises as part of its investigations into alleged irregularities in the purchase of land by R B Educational Trust run by his family.

This case of possession of land in excess of the standard 100 kanals (12.5 acres) as stipulated under the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act 1976 came to light in 2014-2015 when S K Bhalla filed an RTI seeking information about the land in possession of R B Educational Trust. Thereafter, he filed a miscellaneous petition in his already pending PIL in the J&K High Court, seeking retrieval of excess land from the trust run by Singh’s family.

R B Educational Trust, headed by Singh’s wife and ex-MLA Kanta Andotra, is alleged to have, in collusion with certain revenue officials, acquired 31.25 acres of land against the stipulated 12.5 acre standard limit.

While the CBI had registered a case in this matter in 2021, the ED began its probe against Singh this year.