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Punjab VB raids house of ex-Congress MLA Kuldeep Singh Vaid in Ludhiana
Vigilance officials said the raid was conducted as part of a probe into a disproportionate assets case
A team of the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) raided the house of former Congress MLA Kuldeep Singh Vaid, who is also a former bureaucrat, at Sarabha Nagar in Ludhiana on Monday.
The VB is probing a disproportionate assets case against Vaid, who had unsuccessfully contested the Punjab assembly elections last year.
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A 1992-batch Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officer, who was upgraded to the Indian Administrative Service in 2007, Vaid was the Moga deputy commissioner and Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority additional chief administrator during service.
He won the 2017 assembly election from Ludhiana’s Gill constituency on the Congress ticket.
A VB official said the raids were part of the probe against him for acquiring properties and assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
Vaid is the latest among several Punjab Congress leaders facing the VB heat.
Chief minister Bhagwant Mann took on the leader of opposition Partap Singh Bajwa during the budget session in the Punjab assembly last week over shielding the corrupt by criticising the action of the VB against tainted leaders. He said his government had adopted a zero-tolerance policy against corruption and exemplary action will be ensured against the erring leaders.
Training his guns on state Congress leaders, the chief minister said most of the Congress leaders in the Opposition benches are tainted. He told Bajwa though these leaders are sitting among him on these seats, they too will also have to pay for their sins very soon as action against them was inevitable.
Bajwa hit out at the AAP government in Punjab, saying it could not be selective and vindictive only against the opposition leaders on allegations of corruption.
Bajwa tweeted, “Both Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann become victims of vendetta politics in Delhi when it comes to Satyendra Jain and Manish Sisodia. You become vindictive in Punjab in the name of abolishing corruption. Why Dr Vijay Singla, Fauja Singh Sarari and Amit Rattan continue to enjoy AAP patronage. Such cherry-picking will not work.”
Former minister Brahm Mohindra, who was second to Captain Amarinder Singh in the Punjab cabinet, in 2017 was the sixth Congress minister under the VB scanner for having disproportionate assets. The VB has arrested Sadhu Singh Dharamsot in a similar case, while former ministers Sham Sunder Arora, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Gurpreet Singh Kangar, Bharat Bhushan Ashu and at least five other Congress leaders are under VB scrutiny for amassing illegal properties.
