Author: Rohan Dua, TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 6, 2017
URL:   http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/minister-rana-gurjeet-singhs-ex-cook-took-companys-revenue-from-20-crore-to-103-crore-in-8-months/articleshow/59012215.cms

Amit Bahadur, former cook of Punjab power minister Rana Gurjeet, who is in the eye of a storm created by the Rs 1,026 crore mining auction controversy , took his textile firm's turnover from a modest Rs 20 crore to Rs 103 crore in eight months

This has been revealed from the balance sheet of R J Texfab, one of the three firms where Bahadur is a director. The cook assumed charge as director of the company on August 8, 2015. The firm was doing a business worth Rs 3.9 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 20.38 crore in 2014-15. After Bahadur took over, its revenue shot up to Rs 103.81crore in 2015-16. Before Bahadur joined the firm, its profit was just Rs 14,503 in 2014-15. After, he joined, the profit was Rs 4.39 lakh after tax deductions. One of its biggest expenses was Rs 67 lakh towards packaging goods manufactured by the company.

Bahadur is one of the four people, who are either working in Gurjeet's sugar mills or have been employees in the past, and have collectively won mining contracts worth Rs 50 crore despite their annual income not exceeding Rs 6 lakh. TOI had disclosed that Bahadur's income tax re turns (ITR) and salary receipts had shown an income of just Rs 92,679 in 2015-16 and had Rs 4,840 in his Indusind Bank accounts in April 2017 before he won the mining site auction worth Rs 26.5 crore and even submitted Rs 13.5 crore as the first instalment.

Opposition parties, including AAP , SAD and BJP , have accused Gurjeet of using Bahadur and others as fronts for the mining business. Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has set up a judicial commission led by a retired Punjab and Haryana high court judge, Justice J S Narang, to look into the allegations. But AAP and SAD have questioned the commission's terms of reference, saying they do not include a probe into the money trail between the four men and Gurjeet.

TOI is in possession of the balance sheets, annual property returns as well as profit and loss statements of R J Texfab.These documents further reveal that the company in 2015 also gave an unsecured loan of Rs 1.12 crore to the power minister.The firm gave unsecured loans running into Rs 75 lakh to Gur jeet's sons Rana Inder and Rana Ranjit Singh.

The company states its purpose of business as "manufacture, produce, with or without foreign collaboration and to purchase, sell, import, export or otherwise to deal in all types of cloth including furnishing fabrics, in India or elsewhere in the world. To carry on the business of merchants, brokers, agents, stockists, dealers, sellers and buyers of all kinds of yarn, fibres, fabrics".

Gurjeet's son Inder told TOI that their firms have a clean business record and have nothing to hide. "Our business transactions have always been clean and we have maintained the highest standards of propriety," he said.

TOI had earlier disclosed that another Chandigarhbased firm Flawless Traders Pvt Limited where Bahadur was made director in August 2015, had investments of Rs 16 crore in shares in Gurjeet's firm Rana Polycot.