Sukh Ram

Sukh Ram is a former union communications minister in Indian National Congress Government. He was a member of Lok Sabha from Mandi constituency of Himachal Pradesh. He won the Vidhan Sabha election five times and the Lok sabha election three times.

Controversies

Ram was Telecom Minister in P. V. Narasimha Rao's cabinet. In 1996 the Central Bureau of Investigation seized from his official residence Rs. 3.6 crores in cash concealed in bags and suitcases, which he had collected in connection with irregularities in awarding a telecom contract. He was convicted on 18 November 2011, and sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Delhi court in 2002.

Ram's conviction and his 5-year rigorous imprisonment sentence, pronounced on 19 November 2011, came at a time when the country had witnessed country-wide agitations and indefinite fast by the anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare.

As a coincidence, Ram, the former union minister of telecommunications, will be lodged in the Tihar Prisons Jail No. 1, the same as the one in which another former minister of telecommunications, Andimuthu Raja, is being lodged as an undertrial in what is widely known as the multi-core rupees 2G Spectrum scam. The November 2011 sentencing of Ram is not related to the 2G spectrum scam, but is related to the fraudulent procedures followed in the purchase of polythene-insulated jelly-filled cables for the department of telecommunication of which he was minister. Ram has previously been sentenced for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

Although convicted and sentenced by different courts in three different but related cases, Ram has vowed to fight his case in higher courts.

See also

• List of scandals in India
• Licence Raj
• Mafia Raj
• Lok Ayukta