DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Former Industries minister Sunder Sham Arora on Thursday confessed to the Vigilance Bureau (VB) that he had played an active role in bifurcation of 25 acres industrial land owned by M/s Gulmohar Township into 125 plots. Sources said that the former minister also admitted during his interrogation at the VB headquarters in Mohali that he had sent a note dated March 17, 2021 to the PSIEC Managing Director asking her to furnish a report on all requests for bifurcation of industrial plots that were pending before it till March 16, 2021. Within a couple of days of the minister's intervention, the PSIEC ordered the bifurcation of the industrial land into 125 plots, allegedly in violation of rules and procedures, sources said. The anti-corruption agency had brought Arora on a production warrant from the Ropar jail for a day for questioning him on several leads that it got during the interrogation of 8 PSIEC officials, including former Executive Director SP Singh. All accused who were in Vigilance custody till today were sent to jail by a Mohali court. Sources said the VB is now verifying bank details of the minister and other accused who were involved in the decision-making of the bifurcation of the 25-acre industrial project owned by M/s Gulmohar. The agency is likely to question some other senior officers who earlier served in the PSIEC. On January 5, the State Vigilance had booked Arora, senior IAS officer Neelima along with 12 others on charges of corruption, forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy. It had subsequently arrested SP Singh, the then Executive Director of PSIEC, J S Bhatia, Chief General Manager, Ashima Agarwal, Assistant Town Planner, Devinderpal Singh, General Manager, Parminder Singh, XEN-II (now Chief Engineer), Ankur Choudhary, the then Estate Officer and now Deputy General Manager, Sandeep Singh, SDE (Mohali) and Rajat Kumar, DA. These officers were allegedly part of the approval process that allowed transferring/bifurcation of an industrial plot to a realtor company. In this case, three owners/partners of a realtor firm, Gulmohar Township have also been named as accused and the Bureau is making all efforts to arrest them. (editor@dailyworld.in)