Former Punjab MLA and liquor baron Deep Malhotra, 67, is once again in the news after the Income Tax Department began raids at his Faridkot house, office and two other premises connected to his business partners Thursday.
The raids followed the arrest of his son Gautam by the Enforcement Directorate in February in connection with the Delhi excise policy case. In October 2022, the ED searched Malhotra’s houses in Mansa, Faridkot and Ludhiana in connection with the case. The I-T raids in Punjab have also come when protests are going on against Malhotra’s liquor factory at Zira in the Ferozepur district.
Malhotra, who has liquor and real estate businesses in Punjab, Haryana Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, entered electoral politics as a Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidate from the Faridkot constituency in the 2012 Assembly polls. He won by a thin margin of 2,687 votes over Congress heavyweight Avtar Sing Brar. The SAD (Badal) was in alliance with the BJP in Punjab then and formed the government.
A novice in politics, Malhotra, however, lost interest in it at the fag-end of the SAD-BJP regime and announced that he was quitting it. “He never sought a ticket for the 2017 polls and told us he could not give time to politics. Hence we should look for another candidate from Faridkot,” recalled Daljit Singh Cheema, former SAD minister and the party’s current spokesperson.
A one-time close confidante of former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal, Malhotra developed differences of opinion with several SAD leaders when he was an MLA and expressed displeasure over the party’s appointment of the Faridkot municipal council president. However, he never went vocal against the SAD.
Despite being an ex-MLA of the SAD, in March 2018, he got a significant chunk of liquor vends in Punjab when the Congress ruled the state. He also has a distillery in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh. Even in Delhi, he got a sizeable number of liquor vends after the change in liquor policy.
SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal previously stated that Malhotra might have funded the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) during the Delhi and Punjab Assembly polls in reference to his persistent clout.
In January, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann announced that the AAP government would close Malhotra’s liquor factory at Zira in Ferozepur district after residents had sat on a dharna from July 2022, alleging that it was polluting groundwater in several villages and causing air pollution. However, since the government issued no formal notification, the local people have continued their protest in front of the liquor factory, Malbros International Private Limited.
The factory recently filed a fresh petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the closure order. Sources revealed that the Punjab Pollution Control Board plans to withdraw the closure order.
Malhotra’s factory spokesman maintained that they were following all norms, while the fresh petition in the high court has made the protestors active again. They are planning for a mega protest against the government, stating that soil and water samples test reports did not favour the liquor unit.
All political parties have been playing safe regarding the protest led by Sanjha Morcha Zira against Malhotra’s factory. However, they spoke up against the use of force by the police against the protesters and the arrest of several of them in December last year.
Though Malhotra stated as early as in 2016 that he was not keen to remain in active politics, even today, he mentions himself as an ex-MLA of Faridkot on his social media pages.
