‘Relief’ for Capt in City Centre scam

Jupinderjit Singh & Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 12

The burden of the alleged Rs 1,144-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam on Punjab Chief Minister-designate Capt Amarinder Singh may be lifted with the state Vigilance Bureau (VB)  initiating a review of the “facts and figures of the case”, in the light of some “new evidence” which has cropped up 10 years after the scam was reported.

The case was pending trial in a Ludhiana court, which was yet to frame charges against the accused even though the VB had filed a 130-page chargesheet in December 2007 naming Capt Amarinder and 35 others. The VB had listed 152 persons as witnesses. 

It had a few days ago — before the Assembly poll results were declared — decided to review the case following an application filed by some of the accused that they were not properly heard earlier.

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Sources insisted that the “case was over” for all practical purposes since reviewing a case at this juncture meant giving the accused a clean chit.

Last year, the Vigilance Bureau had filed a closure report in a Mohali court in the alleged Amritsar Improvement Trust scam that also involved Capt Amarinder. 

Capt Amarinder had maintained that there was nothing in the cases, “which were being unnecessarily dragged”, even as the Aam Aadmi Party had accused the Akalis and Congress of “playing a friendly game by withdrawing cases against each other”. 

Sources said some officials of infrastructure company Today Homes, which was constructing the City Centre project, had filed an application before the VB that they were never properly heard in the case. One of the applicants was Chetan Gupta, a director of the company.

Chief Director, Vigilance Bureau, AS Rai confirmed that “some of the accused have furnished new facts and figures on the basis of which we are reviewing the case”.

A month after the Akalis had wrested power from the Capt Amarinder-led Congress government in 2007, the VB had registered an FIR accusing him of tweaking rules to favour the Delhi-based company. It was alleged that the company derived benefits worth Rs 1,144 crore.

Controversial Ludhiana project

City Centre project was announced in 2003 during tenure of Capt Amarinder Singh as CM. Launched in 2006, it was touted as the fourth-largest project in Asia involving multiplexes, malls, leisure parks. However, it was alleged that Congress leaders received kickbacks of Rs 100 crore for changing rules to favour Today Homes. The Vigilance Bureau at one time submitted a 20,000-page file regarding the charges in court. However, the case was not pursued actively in SAD-BJP’s second term.