Author: Ramesh Vinayak
Publication: India Today
Date: February 7, 2005
Even as Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder
Singh was busy touring the tsunami-hit Andaman and Nicobar Islands last
week, his much-flaunted and now taunted anti-corruption drive back home
was rocked by sensational cash-and-carry charges against his Man Friday
and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi.
The former ace shooter-turned-MLA
was the target of a tape-and-trap scandal in which he had allegedly accepted
a bribe of Rs 25 lakh from a businessman Gurdev Singh Sidhu, promising
to get him on lease a government industrial plot in Pathankot. Apparently,
Sodhi didn't deliver on his promise even four years after he allegedly
accepted the bribe in two instalments. But Sidhu ostensibly was no ordinary
bribe-giver. He had diligently recorded all his cash-for-deal conversations
and when he reached the end of his patience, released the damning tape.
Caught unawares, Sodhi first denied
ever-knowing Sidhu and then took refuge in the usual "conspiracy-to-tarnish-me"
protestations, calling Sidhu a "blackmailer". The allegations, however,
hit the bull's-eye when, a day after the scandal broke out, Sodhi hurriedly
signed another deal with his tormentor-returning the entire bribe money,
through his nephew.
While the charges against Sodhi
have left Amarinder embarrassed, it has been lapped up by his detractors,
both within and outside the party. Former MP and Congress' stormy petrel
Jagmeet Singh Brar was the first to take a potshot at the chief minister's
inner circle, sarcastically calling the Sodhi episode an "unfortunate development".
The Opposition Shiromani Akali Dal
(SAD) is gearing up to see that the controversy doesn't die too soon. "The
scandal has unmasked the corrupt coterie of the chief minister," says sad
supremo Parkash Singh Badal, who was a target of the chief minister's anti-graft
campaign. Clearly, Amarinder has much to explain before doing what he does
the best-giving clean chits to his beleaguered confidants.