BATHINDA: The arrest of recently sacked Punjab health minister Vijay Singla and his OSD Pardeep Kumar is the third instance in the last nine years wherein a nephew of the embattled politician has turned out to be a vital link to alleged corruption.
Pardeep is the son of Singla’s first cousin.
In February this year, then CM Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew Bhupinder Singh Honey was arrested after the Enforcement Directorate had recovered Rs 10 crore from Honey and an associate of his. Before this, when four-time Congress MP Pawan Kumar Bansal was the railway minister in the UPA government in May 2013, his nephew Vijay Singla (not linked to AAP’s Singla) was arrested and Rs 89.7 lakh seized from him after he was accused of taking the money as bribe from senior railway officer Mahesh Kumar for a posting of member (electrical) in the Railway Board.
In Channi and Bansal’s cases, only nephews were arrested, but the situation is different in Singla’s case as he has been arrested too. Bansal and Channi have already paid politically for the cases. While Bansal has not been able to win a Lok Sabha election from Chandigarh since 2014 and lost twice in a row to Kirron Kher of BJP, Channi lost from both the seats he contested the 2022 assembly elections — Bhadaur in Barnala and home turf Chamakaur Sahib in Ropar.
Singla is accused of demanding a 1% commission for allotting tenders. Pardeep, who is into plyboard business in Bathinda, is accused of being the conduit. He had started living in Chandigarh after his uncle was appointed a minister in the AAP government in March 2022.
The neighbours of Pardeep in Bathinda’s Model Town Phase 1 locality were not ready to accept that he could have demanded bribes and claimed that he had a clean image. An AAP leader said politicians trusted their relatives more. “Also, when their deeds are exposed, politicians try to put the blame on their relatives,” added the leader.
