Foes again, Bir Devinder offers to depose against Amarinder

CHANDIGARH : With a Mohali court on Thursday rejecting the Vigilance Bureau’s closure report in the Amritsar Improvement Trust scam case, in which chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh is an accused, former deputy speaker of Punjab assembly Bir Devinder Singh, the whistle-blower in the case, volunteered to depose before the trial court.

Hailing the order of the court which has questioned the VB’s “haste” in filing a 26-page cancellation report last year and referred to his statement before the Vidhan Sabha, Bir Devinder said the VB recorded his detailed seven-page statement on September 22, 2008, but it was never placed before the trial court with a “criminal intent to help the VIP accused”. The case pertains to 32 acres of prime land being exempted by the Amritsar Improvement Trust in 2006 to benefit a private coloniser, Veer Builders. Bir Devinder had raised the matter as a starred (question number 1,540) in the 12th Vidhan Sabha on Feburary 22, 2006.

The Captain-Bir Devinder rivalry goes back to Amarinder’s last stint as chief minister (2002-2007). Devinder not only raised the issue of the alleged “land scam” but also deposed against Captain before a committee set up by the 13th Punjab Vidhan Sabha when the SADBJP alliance came to power and later the vigilance, which the House ordered to lodge an FIR in the case.

“Being the whistle-blower, I volunteer to depose before the trial court if it appoints an amicus curie to help me in presenting evidence. The vigilance took a U-turn after clandestine understanding between former CM Parkash Singh Badal and Amarinder to bail out each other in corruption cases,” the two-time MLA said.

The old rivals had turned friends before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Amritsar when Bir Devinder extensively campaigned for Captain and spoke at his rallies. But they again fell out in 2016 ahead of the state elections over the Ghanour seat. Devinder had then accused Amarinder of trying to “blackmail” him by promising the post of a minister if he becomes the CM and asking him to sign an affidavit in the presence of lawyer couple -- Atul Nanda, now Punjab advocate general, his wife, Rameeja Hakeem, now an additional advocate general.

Devinder had claimed that he had refused to sign the affidavit as it would have “amounted to perjury and undermined the dignity of the House”. Amarin-

der had then rebutted his allegation calling Bir Devinder a “disgruntled person who had joined hands with the Akalis to throw him out of the assembly”.

On why had he refused to depose before the vigilance after the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ordered a re-investigation, he said he had already made a detailed statement before the house committee and the vigilance.

“By then, Captain and Badal had closed ranks and the vigilance wanted me to change the statement. Amarinder’s close aide, Bharat Inder Chahal, now adviser to CM, too forced me to change my statement. Chahal told me we would fix the date and time with the vigilance DIG, who was in constant touch with him.

In first week of March 2016, Chahal called me up again to say how will I get a ticket to contest Ghanour if I did not give the statement in Amarinder’s favour,” he added. The revelations had led to his suspension from the party before the 2017 elections and Bir Devinder seems to be in no mood to let bygones be bygones.

SAYS VB RECORDED HIS DETAILED SEVENPAGE STATEMENT AS ‘WHISTLEBLOWER’ BUT IT WAS NOT PLACED BEFORE TRIAL COURT