Senior Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia on Thursday applied for anticipatory bail at a sessions court in Mohali.
The move came after the Punjab Police issued a lookout notice against Bikram Singh Majithia on Wednesday as he had been named in a drugs case. A case against Bikram under various sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act was registered on the basis of a 2018 status report on the probe into the drug racket in the state. The report was filed by anti-drug special task force (STF) chief Harpreet Singh Sidhu in the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018.
Bikram Singh Majithia, who is 45, is the brother of MP and former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the wife of Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal. In addition to the Badal link, Bikram Singh Majithia comes from a distinguished political family. His great-grandfather, Sunder Singh Majithia, was the first president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
Bikram Singh Majithia entered high-level politics by winning from the Majitha constituency in the 2007 Assembly polls. He won from the constituency in 2012 and 2017. Bikram was made a minister in 2007 and handled a number of portfolios such as revenue, rehabilitation and disaster management, information and public relations and non-conventional energy.
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Bikram was perceived to have risen rapidly in the Akali Dal, with speculation he could be a candidate for chief minister. Some Akali Dal leaders such as Ranjit Singh Brahmpura and Rattan Singh left the party being upset with Bikram's rise. Bikram's popularity was evident in the fact that he won from his constituency easily in the 2017 election even as the Akali Dal was routed, losing all but two seats in the Majha region.
In January 2014, Jagdish Singh Bhola, an accused in a drugs case, claimed Bikram Singh Majithia was involved in the case. Bikram Singh Majithia was summoned for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in December 2014 after he was accused of involvement in a Rs 6,000 crore synthetic drugs case. The summons led to tension between the Akali Dal and BJP, at a time when the two parties were allies at the state and Centre.
Both Congress and AAP had accused Bikram Singh Majithia of links to drug dealers and claimed the Akali Dal leadership was shielding him. In 2016, Bikram filed a defamation case against AAP MP Sanjay Singh for claiming he had links to drug dealers.
