The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Sunday arrested former Deputy Chief Minister Om Prakash Soni in a case relating to allegations that he held disproportionate assets, NDTV reported.
Soni, a Congress leader, has been accused of amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income from 2016 to 2022, when the party was in power in the state.
An official spokesperson said that a case has been registered against him under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with criminal misconduct by a public servant, The Tribune reported.
Soni was arrested in Chandigarh and will be produced before a court in Amritsar on Monday.
The vigilance bureau had opened an inquiry against the former deputy chief minister on October 10. The spokesperson said that between April 1, 2016, and March 31, 2022, the income of Soni and his family was Rs 4,52,18,771 but their expenditure was Rs 12,48,42,692.
The former deputy chief minister’s expenditure was 176.08% more than his known sources of income, the vigilance bureau said. During this period, he was said to have acquired properties in the name of his wife Suman Soni and son Raghav Soni.
On the arrest, Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring accused Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann of trying to deviate public attention from real issues. “Vendetta politics has never yielded any output and this will be another such incident,” he said.
Soni, along with another Congress leader Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, became the deputy chief minister on September 20, 2021 – when party leader Charanjit Singh Channi was sworn in as the chief minister.
In the 2022 election, he lost the Assembly election from Amritsar Central constituency to Aam Aadmi Party’s Ajay Gupta.
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