New Delhi: In a cash laundering probe into unlawful sand mining close to the Pakistan border, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has searched 17 premises, together with these of alleged Aam Aadmi Get together (AAP) staff in Punjab’s Pathankot district, ThePrint has discovered.
Searches have been carried out on Thursday and Friday at mining firms and stone crushers in and across the Pathankot border space, in addition to residential areas in Pathankot, Amritsar and Gurdaspur linked to suspected AAP employee Vijay Katarchak.
In keeping with Opposition and ED sources, Vijay Katarchak is an in depth aide of AAP Minister Lal Chand Katarchak. He was discovered to be concerned in defending mining firms and their homeowners.
The ED probe stems from a case filed by the state vigilance division in 2023 towards Pathankot’s former assistant improvement secretary (village improvement) Kuldeep Singh. Days earlier than his retirement, he was charged by the state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau for passing an order granting about 92 acres of panchayat land, a number of kilometers from the border, to seven girls.
Mining actions proceed unabated within the area regardless of the Punjab and Haryana Excessive Court docket banning them in August 2022, company officers mentioned.
Latest raids within the state by central businesses, together with the search of AAP MLA Lal Chand Katarchak, who represents Bhore constituency within the state Meeting, in Katarchak village, have supplied contemporary ammunition to the opposition to focus on the AAP authorities. Katarchak additionally holds portfolios for meals, civil provides, shopper affairs, forest and wildlife conservation within the Bhagwant Mann-led cupboard.
In the course of the 2023 investigation, it was discovered that Minister Katarchak had really helpful Kuldeep Singh for the ADC put up to his cupboard colleague Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal by semi-official paperwork. In keeping with media experiences on the time, Singh was sentenced to the extra costs on February 24 of the identical yr, 4 days earlier than his retirement.
“Unauthorized switch the day earlier than retirement”
In keeping with the case data, the village improvement and panchayat finance secretary arrange a committee of two investigators, which discovered that Singh had handed orders in favor of the seven girls regardless that the land was throughout the purview of the Punjab Village Widespread Land Regulation Act, 1961, i.e. communal land that can not be used for private functions.
The fee discovered by investigation that the ladies – Veena Parmar, Balwinder Kaur, Manjit Kaur, Bharti Banta, Inderdeep Kaur, Somu Raj, Parveen Kumari and Tarsem Rani – had filed a grievance with the district income division in December 2022 in search of possession of the communal land.
Nevertheless, their plea was authorised solely when Singh took cost because the district’s improvement commissioner, which was handed on February 27.
Based mostly on the investigation report, the federal government’s particular secretary for improvement and panchayat officers approached the Vigilance Bureau in search of motion towards Singh and the beneficiaries of unlawful land allotment.
Gol village (to which 92 acres have been allotted) is situated within the decrease reaches of the Ravi River alongside the border with Pakistan and has been a hotbed for unlawful mining for years, regardless of strict orders from the Excessive Court docket.
ThePrint has contacted AAP spokesperson Baltej Pannu for remark. He mentioned he would reply after checking whether or not Vijay Katarchak is admittedly near AAP minister Lal Chand Katarchak, as claimed by the Opposition.
(Edited by Vinny Mishra)
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