“There has been a large-scale exchange of money at the highest level in the process of granting exemption to 32.10 acres on the Jalandhar-Amritsar road. Though the committee holds Capt Amarinder Singh, Ch Jagjit Singh, late Raghunath Sahai Puri and Jugal Kishore Sharma as senior members of the House in high esteem, in view of the task of holding an inquiry assigned by the sacred House, the committee has to say with regret that all these respectable legislators have been found guilty and soiled in corruption.
“We will restrain ourselves from going any further in the matter because the decision to take action against those who have violated the sanctity of the House and played fraud on people of Punjab is to be decided by the House. We hope that our report will be helpful to the Vidhan Sabha so that such things do not happen again besides putting some checks in place to prevent their recurrence,” the 84-page report said.
The Speaker on January 11 this year had constituted a nine-member committee, headed by chief parliamentary secretary Harish Rai Dhanda, to investigate the allotment of 32.10 acre plot on the Jalandhar-Amritsar road to a private developer by the previous Congress government.
The decision to table the report in the monsoon session has put the Congress on the defensive as it wanted to use the session to nail the ruling SAD-BJP alliance on various fronts, including poor handling of flood relief, non-performance on various fronts and “desecration of democracy” in the panchayat elections.
The committee that has Virsa Singh Valtoha, Sarabjit Singh Makkar and Jagbir Singh Brar (all from the SAD), Anil Joshi and Sukhpal Singh Nanu (BJP) and Harminder Singh Jassi, Sher Singh Gaigowal and Randeep Singh Nabha (Congress) as its members, had held 16 meetings since January 11.
It recorded among other statements of Ratna, also then Congress leader whose term as chairperson of the trust had been cut short and Jugal Kishore Sharma replaced her. The committee also
brought on record the entire official correspondence on the special exemption given to the 32.10-acre scheme to facilitate a private developer.
It also brought on the record the dissent expressed by all three Congress members of the committee, quoting the Supreme Court in its 2002 judgment on special reference on the competence of an Assembly to raise an issue that has already been decided by the previous Assembly. “The chairman or committee should report to the Vidhan Sabha about the competence of holding the inquiry and if so ruling must be given about the competence of this constituted committee to conduct any further inquiry. Therefore, all members of our party request for a ruling before conducting the inquiry any further. But, it is the prerogative of the chairman. We still request that specific ruling be given for conducting the inquiry further and, therefore, we request that till the matter is sub judice, the report may not be submitted.”
Both Capt Amarinder Singh and Ch Jagjit Singh also raised
similar doubts about the competence of the special committee of the House to hold this inquiry and held that no verbal order was given to them by the committee or its chairman during the inquiry.
Talking to newspersons after tabling the report, Dhanda said all objections raised by Congress members of the committee besides those of Capt Amarinder Singh and Ch Jagjit Singh were considered and rejected by a majority vote in the committee. He held that no case was pending in the court on this specific scheme and the committee completed its probe in accordance with conventions and rules of both the Vidhan Sabha and Parliament.
The committee was well within its competence to conduct the assigned task, he said, maintaining that it was the wisdom of the House that constituted it. “As such, the committee could not entertain any objections about its constitution,” he added.
The tabling of the report by the chairman of the committee this afternoon led to strong protests by Congress legislators who walked into the Well of the House and even attempted to break the security cordon of the Speaker’s podium.
In fact, the tabling of the report took not only Congress legislators but also members of the media by surprise as most of them confused amendments to the Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure as last items on the agenda for the day. They were packing for the day as the report was tabled.
Capt Amarinder Singh, who sat through for most of the session today, had left the House only 20 minutes before Speaker asked Dhanda to table the report. He started talking about its salient points before a surprised Capt Amarinder Singh and his supporters re-entered the House.
And two minutes later, Congress legislators raised questions about the sanctity of the committee and its report. Raising slogans against the Punjab government they rushed to the Well before Speaker Nirmal Singh Kahlon adjourned the House for an hour.
Interestingly, both Capt Amarinder Singh and Rajinder Kaur Bhattal stood quietly, watching their party legislators raise slogans and stall proceedings of the House.
When the House reassembled, Congressmen started to raise slogans again as Virsa Singh Valtoha started speaking about the report. At one stage, both treasury and Opposition benches were face to face in slogan raising before the Speaker called it a day.
The House is yet to decide about the action to be taken on the report.
