Turncoats are turning out to be an embarrassment for the Shiromani Akali Dal led State Government. Two of the “rivals” recently inducted by the party have left the leadership uncomfortable.
While Mangat Rai Bansal was recently convicted by the trial court in an alleged embezzlement case, Joginder Pal Jain too had to step down from the post of Punjab State Warehousing Corporation chairman.
His resignation came soon after the Punjab and Haryana High Court was told that Jain had used “forged passport dishonestly and fraudulently with a view to cheat the immigration authorities”, and was released on probation by a Delhi Court after he pleaded guilty.
The information about his resignation was furnished to the High Court on Monday morning by Punjab Advocate-General Ashok Aggarwal.
To make the matters worse for the Government, Aggarwal told the Division Bench of the High Court that the Chief Minister had not applied his mind to the antecedents of businessman-turned-politician Jain while appointing him as the chairman.
Jain had only recently shifted his allegiance towards the Akali Dal, despite being a sitting Congress legislator from Moga.He was then awarded with the position of the Corporation chairman. Bansal, on the other hand, was only last month granted bail by the High Court.
The order came some three months after he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment on the allegations of embezzlement.The Congress turned SAD leader and 21 others were convicted in April this year in a 14-year-old case of alleged paddy scam.
Bansal, a former Congress MlA, joined SAD in September last, and was rewarded with the chairmanship of Mansa Planning Committee.
The developments are significant as the alleged criminal past of the two recently-inducted “rivals” has surfaced when the parliamentary polls are less than a year away.
The party is already facing allegations of its failure to maintain law and order situation in the State; and alleged involvement of the two leaders in criminal cases is likely to be used by the Congress to project the Akali Dal as a party that patronises leaders with a not-so-clean past.
The party already has faced major embarrassment with the conviction of its minister — Bibi Jagir Kaur — in a case hovering around the abduction of her own daughter. Accusing finger has also been raised against some other ministers, including Gulzar Singh Ranike, Sikander Singh Maluka, and former minister Tota Singh.
Otherwise also, Deputy Chief Minister and SAD president Sukhbir Badal has come under criticism for making attempts to blindly induct rivals in his party without verification of their antecedents.
The junior Badal was in line of fire during the recently concluded Moga by-elections for wooing Jain into joining the SAD despite his “past”.
Ahead of Moga by-poll in February this year, Congress had launched a scathing attack on the SAD, claiming that the ruling party had fielded a person whom it had earlier described as an “international smuggler”.
Ever since the SAD-BJP coalition’s record victory during the 2012 State assembly polls, approximately 20 senior political leaders, along with other supporters, have hopped on the SAD bandwagon.