Embezzled grants, fake brides: scams that cost SAD minister his job

After an unprecedented mandate to rule Punjab for the second time in a row, the SAD-BJP government has been dealt one political blow after another in its first six months in power. The latest embarrassment has come from allegations of a rip-off of development and welfare grants — the Akalis' main poll plank — by staff and the son of cabinet minister Gulzar Singh Ranike, who resigned on Sunday "on moral grounds to pave the way for a fair vigilance probe".

This follows the conviction of two ministers — Bibi Jagir Kaur for abetment to suicide, abduction and forcible abortion of her daughter, and Tota Singh for misuse of his official car during his stint in an earlier tenure (1997-2002) of the Parkash Singh Badal government.

Gulzar Singh, like Badal, takes his surname from his village — Ranike, 5 km from the Pakistan border. The fourth of eight siblings, he went on to represent the reserved Attari in Amritsar four times in a row after his brother Dalbir Singh, then Attari MLA, was gunned down by militants in 1991.

Made a minister of state in 1999 by Badal, he was elevated to the cabinet in 2007, when the alliance returned to power, as minister for animal husbandry, dairy development and welfare of SC and BC. He continued to hold these departments in the present government despite hints that his personal staff had been receiving cheques pertaining to development and welfare grants for villages.

The first layer of the scam was unravelled in May 2011, when a case of embezzlement of funds issued to Ranike's Attari constituency by the Centre under the Border Area Development Programme (BADP) — Rs 40 lakh in 2008-09 and Rs 18.5 lakh in 2011-12 — was registered in May 2011. No one was, however, named as accused.

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