A day after Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh ruled out acting against the Fastway cables having shares of the Badal family, local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday maintained that every possible effort would be made to present a “correct picture” before him.
“We would present the correct picture before the Chief Minister and would definitely recover the taxes due towards the Fastway,” he said.
Sidhu said that he had called 220 junior engineers of the local Self Government, who “gave in writing that no permission was taken to lay underground and over-ground cables by the Fastway except for Zirakpur”.
“Fastway has made cable operators their slaves. How they can be sparedIJ” he said.
Sidhu, in the recently concluded budget session, had declared that the Government will be sending notices to all 8,000 operators across the state, including Fastway, before initiating criminal action against the erring.
laying bare the working of the “cable mafia” in the state in past five years of Akali-BJP rule, Sidhu alleged that the Fastway Cables — that started with a capital of Rs 25 lakh and now has Rs 30 crore profit — “monopolised” cable business in the state causing Rs 500 crore loss to the state revenue by evading taxes, and not making payments to the local governments.
Sidhu declared that as many as 8,000 cable operators are functioning in the state, out of which, 6,500 are directly under the Fastway while remaining 1,500 are indirectly under it.
The former cricketer minced no words to say that Fastway — having links with the Badal family — is his “target”. “Fastway’s business caught speed after SAD-BJP came to power in 2007.
It took over small networks and monopolised the trade in entire Punjab. In figures, they show 1.25 lakh connections in their name, but in reality, it is more than 80 lakh,” he had revealed said.