JALANDHAR: The Enforcement Directorate raided former Congress minister Sunder Sham Arora’s residence in Hoshiarpur. The ED sleuths reached Arora’s palatial house on Jodha Mal Road in the morning and started the search.Arora was Industries and Commerce minister in the Captain Amarinder Singh govt, but he was dropped when Charanjit Singh Channi was made CM. He joined the BJP in June 2022 after the assembly elections.During an enquiry by the Vigilance Bureau into a case involving the transfer of an industrial plot, and while a disproportionate assets case was underway, he was arrested by the VB on October 16, 2022, from Zirakpur when he was allegedly handing over a bag containing Rs 50 lakh to VB AIG Manmohan Kumar for help in clearing his name from the ongoing enquiries against him, including a disproportionate assets case.In January 2023, another FIR was registered against him under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy at the Vigilance Bureau police station, Mohali, in connection with the transfer of an industrial plot in Mohali to a real estate company and allowing it to establish a township.In August 2024, Arora returned to the Congress fold. He was inducted back into the party by Punjab party affairs in-charge Devendra Yadav in Delhi, with whom he posted pictures. Later, Punjab Congress leadership, including PPCC President Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa, and Punjab Congress general secretary Sandeep Sandhu, welcomed him into the party fold in Chandigarh.Arora was not alone in returning to the Congress fold. Three other senior Congress leaders, Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, and Gurpreet Singh Kangar, who joined the BJP at the same time, also returned to the Congress fold.However, in December 2024, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the FIR registered against him in relation to the illegal transfer case of an industrial plot to a real estate company. Apart from Arora, the case against 11 others, including an IAS officer, was also quashed by the Court.The High Court held that the Punjab Vigilance Bureau misused its powers while registering the FIR against former Punjab minister Arora and other officers of the Punjab Small Industries and Export Corporation (PSIEC) in connection with an industrial plot transfer scam in Mohali district. The Court stated that permission for bifurcation was granted lawfully by the competent authority and the VB allegations of a loss of Rs 500-700 crore were completely imaginary.Further reprimanding the VB, the HC observed that the bureau selectively targeted and victimised the petitioners, as there were numerous instances in the state of plots being bifurcated or fragmented into smaller plots and no criminal proceedings were initiated by the bureau.
