Two days after the Enforcement Directorate transferred its main investigator probing the multi-crore drug case in Punjab, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday said that his Government had nothing to do with the transfer of ED official. “We have nothing to do with the transfer of Jalandhar-based official of the ED, including its Assistant Director Niranjan Singh,” he said on the side lines of NRI Sangat Darshan in ludhiana.
“The transfer of ED official is a matter purely under the jurisdiction of the Central Government and the Punjab Government has never been consulted or taken into confidence on the issue,” he said. Singh was conducting an inquiry into a drug-related case in which Punjab Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, a close relative of Badal, was also summoned recently.
SAD is an ally of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre and the Revenue Minister’s sister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who is also the wife of Deputy Chief Minister and SAD president Sukhbir Badal, is a Union Minister in the Modi Cabinet. Putting the ball in the Centre’s court on Opposition political parties demanding the inquiry to be held in a State other than Punjab, Badal said, “It is again a matter under the purview of the Union Government as to where they should hold the enquiry.”
The decision to transfer ED’s Assistant Director Niranjan Singh based in Jalandhar to Kolkata was slammed by the Congress, which alleged political expediency behind the move and demanded the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention for a probe by CBI or a Supreme Court judge into the drug scam. According to sources, the transfer orders were issued on January 16 by the agency’s headquarters in New Delhi.
Justifying the ban on the screening and viewing of film ‘MSG: Messenger of God’ featuring Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in Punjab, he said that the film would have created a law and order problem in the event of its release. “Several intelligence agencies had provided the inputs regarding the possibility of a law and order problem in the State after the release of the film,” he said.