The Sunday Profile: Panth meets Wealth

As his party cries vendetta, the state waits with bated breath to look what the person, who has up to now controlled to fend off each curveball that has come his method, will do subsequent. It’s a name constructed partly because of his criminal crew that has been fast to nix the entire unflattering content material that has come his method ever since 2014, when an Arjuna Awardee wrestler-turned-cop Jagdish Bhola, pushed aside from police provider for allegedly working a man-made drug racket involving crores, hinted at Majithia’s involvement within the business.

Scion of one of the vital robust households of Punjab, that strains its lineage to a basic in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s military, Majithia joined politics in 2007 when he fought and received his maiden Meeting election from Majitha. His elder sister Harsimrat Badal (brother-in-law Sukhbir Badal was once then an MP from Faridkot) went door to door to canvass for him.

In a while afterwards, the 31-year-old, who has a point in trade control from Delhi St Stephen’s Faculty, was once put in as a Cupboard minister within the Parkash Singh Badal govt, arguably the youngest member in an Akali-BJP ministry ruled by means of veterans.

Bikram Singh Majithia is a former Shiromani Akali Dal minister and brother-in-law of its party leader Sukhbir Singh Badal. (Report Photograph)

Within the Meeting, he would lead the party’s payment towards the Opposition, with wit, vitriol, and a few muscle. When it got here to giving the Opposition a stinging retort, the party may just financial institution on him as he took on everybody, together with the irascible Navjot Singh Sidhu when the latter switched to the Congress.

In Amritsar, the place he owns a area, acquaintances name him a deeply religious guy who enjoys studying and will talk about any topic beneath the solar. He’s additionally recognized to be a teetotaller and vegetarian. Sukhbir Badal had as soon as laughingly remarked, “Even their canine are vegetarian.”

It was once no longer lengthy ahead of murmurs began that Majithia, president of the Early life Akali Dal, would someday upstage Sukhbir. Folks pointed to his hallowed pedigree — his nice grandfather was once the founding president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) in 1920; the circle of relatives purchased its first airplane in 1935; his grandfather was once the deputy defence minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cupboard from 1957 to 1962, and his father Satyajit Singh no longer best ran a trade empire unfold throughout Delhi, UP and Punjab, but in addition presided over Amritsar’s Khalsa Faculty that his forefathers had helped present in 1892. It was once a potent mixture of panth and
wealth.

Along with his elder brother Gurmehar tending to the Saraya Staff of Industries, named after the circle of relatives property in Gorakhpur district of UP, Majithia considering politics, taking a leaf out of Akali patriarch and five-time leader minister Parkash Singh Badal’s old skool politics — attending each marriage and bhog rite of his staff, a convention he continues even lately.

His marriage in 2009 to Ganieve Grewal, daughter of a Delhi-based industrialist, was once a grand affair that dazzled toffee-nosed Chandigarh, with 9 other sorts of global delicacies — together with Majithia’s non-public favorite, Italian — and a bunch of NRIs in attendance. The ones days, the Akali govt was once seeking to woo NRI investments with annual meets, and Majithia was once the self-appointed hospitality in-charge.

Alongside the best way, he additionally made many enemies, some within the party who disliked his strongman taste, abrasive speeches, and his fleet of muscular automobiles — an avid rallyist, he was once a standard on the Himalayan circuit. In 2010, the Akali govt claimed he was once getting threats from anti-national components in a foreign country, and the UPA govt on the Centre gave him Z-Plus safety. No person cared to determine why he was once beneath danger. However within the pantheon of post-terrorism Punjab politicians, the place your safety element outlined your pecking order, Majithia had arrived.

After he received the polls in 2012, it was increasingly more transparent: You couldn’t mess with Majithia or Majhe da jarnail (the overall of Majha), as his other people referred to as him with equivalent measure of admiration and worry.

There have been whispers that Badal Senior was once unsatisfied with the younger guy who had discovered his method into the Akali Dal after his sister’s marriage to Sukhbir.
Addressing the 2013 NRI sammelan, Badal had mentioned, with Majitha at the dais with him, “Ask him (Majithia) if he has ever long past to prison. He were given the whole lot on a platter, I’ve spent 17 years in jails.” It was once an it seems that light-hearted second and the target market laughed as Badal went on about how Majithia was once angling for the seat of energy, however the barbs have been unmistakable.

There was once surprise and secret glee when Bhola, the alleged drug broker, pointed a finger at Majithia. However the fees didn’t seem to stay as BJP stalwart Arun Jaitley, pitted towards Captain Amarinder Singh from Amritsar within the 2014 parliamentary polls, handpicked him as his marketing campaign supervisor. Although Amarinder time and again raised the drug payment and received, Jaitley polled extra votes than him within the segments that fall in Majithia’s Meeting seat.

All through this election, Majithia even had a run-in with the Sikh clergy, who accused him of distorting a hymn of the 10th Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh, to favour Jaitley. Majithia submitted to the punishment meted out to him, and wiped clean utensils on the Golden Temple.

The 2017 Meeting polls, fought at the dual problems of substances and sacrilege, had each the Congress and AAP gunning for Majithia. In a well-liked ditty, “Kikli kaleer di”, AAP MP Bhagwant Mann went from village to village lampooning him as the person who may just get you “what you wanted”, suggesting medicine. At ballot rallies, each the events promised to position him at the back of bars on coming to energy. Whilst the Akalis posted their worst-ever electoral lead to historical past with a trifling 15 seats, Majithia controlled to retain his, considered one of best two seats that the Akalis received of their former bastion of Majha.

Because the Congress got here to energy, Majithia fought and received a defamation swimsuit towards political leaders for accusing him of trafficking in medicine. As his affect over the state persevered regardless of the alternate of regime, Congress MLAs groused that former CM Amarinder was once in cahoots with the Akalis.

The Channi govt is asking the December 20 case, founded in large part on a standing file on drug fees towards politicians and policemen that was once submitted within the Punjab and Haryana Top Court docket in February 2018, a large win in its conflict on medicine, and an apt closure for the entire households who’ve suffered because of drug abuse.
However shut aides of Majithia say he’s going to fight it out in courtroom. “He’s going to solution each payment, he’s going to turn out his innocence. The sport has simply begun.”