SAD draws PM's attention to Ludhian a City Centre scam

Chandigarh, Sep 25 (UNI) Prior to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Ludhiana on September 27, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) general secretary Sukhbir Singh Badal today demanded that the Union government should come clean on the Rs 2100 crore City Centre scam and that the prime minister should look into the matter personally.

''The Ludhiana City Centre murky deal is the biggest scam in the history of independent India as the extent and magnitude of corruption and international money-laundering indulged in by Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh through this scam alone far exceeds the scale of the infamous Bofors scandal that had rocked the Rajiv Gandhi government in the late 1980s,'' Mr Badal alleged, in a statement issued here.

Reiterating the SAD's demand for a CBI probe into the scam, Mr Badal reminded the Prime Minister that there was incontrovertible and independent evidence not only of black money to the tune of Rs 2100 crore that changed hands in the deal but also ''a major hawala racket being patronised by the Chief Minister''.

''Evidence captured on video cameras clearly showed rampant indulgence in money laundering by the bigwigs partronising the Ludhiana City Centre, and the country virtually sitting on a valcano of foreign exchange rackets, conceived, masterinded and excuted under the direct command of the Punjab chief minister,' the SAD general secretary alleged.

He said the Punjab Vigilance Bureau lacked both the credibility and the professional competence to get to the bottom of a scam of such international magnitude. ''We expect the Prime Minister to intervene directly and immediately to put a stop to this. A CBI probe is the only way out at this juncture,'' said Mr Badal, a Rajya Sabha member.

The Akali leader also sought an independent probe through a central agency into the Chief Minister's ''frequent hush-hush visits'' to Dubai.

''The Chief Minister had been keeping even the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in the dark about his movements, apart from keeping those away from the glare of his own personal staff, including even his security personnel. It is now clear why he had been behaving in that mysterious fashion. No Chief Minister in the history of the country had ever shrouded his engagements in such complete secrecy and mystery as Amarinder did,'' Mr Badal claimed.

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