Mr Moneybags’ time is up: A bitter pill for the sugar baroncumminister

BIZMANPOLITICIAN, RANA GURJIT, RICHEST CANDIDATE IN STATE POLLS LAST YEAR, HAS HIS DEEP POCKETS, NOT POLITICAL SKILL, TO CREDIT FOR HIS RISE

CHANDIGARH: Money power, not political savvy or grassroots strength, has been minister Rana Gurjit Singh’s calling card in power politics in the Doaba region. As prime financer of Congress poll campaigns, the sweet-talking and Scotch-swilling sugar baron smoothly worked his way into Captain Amarinder Singh’s charmed circle before his fall from grace in the first major scandal to hit the Congress government in its less than a year in office.

His exit, which seems a certainty with pressure mounting on chief minister Amarinder from within the Congress to accept his resignation, has left the party red-faced.

An emboldened opposition, particularly Rana’s belligerent bete noire and former Congressman Sukhpal Singh Khaira of the AAP, is going to go after the blundering state government with renewed energy.

A businessman-turnedpolitician, Rana, the richest candidate in the state assembly polls last year with assets worth Rs 170 crore, had landed the government in the sandpit just days after it came to power with his alleged use of former employees — one of whom was his “cook” — as frontmen to bid for sand mines worth tens of crores.

As more and more details came out, denting the new image of a government that has nearly two-thirds majority, the chorus for action against Rana grew louder. Amarinder was forced to set up a one-member inquiry commission which gave a clean chit to the minister. But it did not help.

There was no end to his troubles, as more charges and controversies, including his family’s interests in the power sector, land purchases and the Enforcement Directorate’s probe in fundraising abroad, kept the pot boiling. The diehard Captain loyalist’s riches also could not save him, turning him literally from an asset to a liability within the first few months.

While Rana has survived and thrived in politics not as much by his political skills as by his deep pockets, his wasn’t a family with ancestral riches.

His grandfather, who belonged to village Barrmajara in Nawanshahr (SBS Nagar) district, was an ordinary farmer. He was among the first settlers in New Zealand in early the 1900s, though.

In the 1950s, Rana’s father came back to settle in Vikrampur village near Bazpur in what is now Uttarakhand, and started out as a wood contractor for clearing jungles to prepare land for agriculture.

When the family returned to Punjab in the 1980s, it had enough money to set up new businesses — a paper mill and a sugar mill — and dabble in politics with enough cash reserves to fund the party and its leaders. By the early 1990s, Rana got close to the then chief minister Beant Singh and could be seen rubbing shoulders with other political bigwigs.

In 2002, the Congress fielded him from Kapurthala assembly constituency, thanks to Amarinder who was then the party’s state unit chief.

Rana had come in contact with Amarinder through party leader Harminder Singh Jassi, a relative of the now-jailed head of Dera Sacha Sauda Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

Two years later, Rana contested the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat and won, but lost from Khadoor Sahib in 2009 before winning two successive assembly elections from Kapurthala. His sister-in-law and wife have also represented the seat in the past.

Though many see the sand mine and other controversies as the end of the political road for Rana, he says he will bounce back.