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Who is Bikram Majithia?
Bikram Singh Majithia is a former cabinet minister in the Punjab government. He belongs to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and is the president of its Youth Wing, Youth Akali Dal. He won the 2007 Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections from the Majitha constituency and again won in 2012 and 2017.
He is the former minister of Revenue, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management, Information & Public Relations, and Non-Conventional Energy.
Bikram Majithia's background
Born in 1976 to a Jat Sikh family, Majithia was educated at the Lawrence School, Sanawar. His father Sardar Satyajit Singh Majithia is a former Deputy Defence Minister. His grandfather Sardar Surjit Singh Majithia was a Wing Commander in the Indian Air Force and his great-grandfather Sir Sundar Singh Majithia was Revenue Minister in the Punjab government.
He comes from a wealthy political-business family that has wide-ranging interests in alcohol distillation, sugar production, power generation, and aviation, among other things.
Majithia is the brother-in-law of Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and brother of former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
Controversy
In December 2021, Majithia was accused of some of the offences under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS).
The cases against Majithia are based on allegations levelled against him in a special task force (STF) report prepared in 2018 by Harpreet Sidhu, a top police official.
Majithia has been accused of providing his cars and security men to Canada-based Punjabi drug dealers, in addition to letting them stay at his residence in Amritsar. He is further accused of facilitating the sale of pseudoephedrine (used in making drugs) between these drug dealers and settling disputes between them.
Responding to the highly sensitive action, SAD patron Parkash Singh Badal termed the registration of the case as the worst example of political vendetta.
Majithia’s lawyers have argued in court that the case against him has been brought by the Congress to “wreak vengeance in the run-up to the upcoming Assembly polls”.