The Rise and ARREST of SANJEEV ARORA: Industrialist Who Became Mann’s Most Powerful Minister

UPDATED on May 10: A court in Gurugram has sent Punjab Cabinet Minister Sanjeev Arora to seven days of Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody. The ED had sought a 10-day remand.

Punjab industries minister Sanjeev Arora was arrested by the ED on Saturday in a fresh PMLA case involving alleged fake GST bills and money laundering through mobile phone exports. A profile of his rise and fall.

Arvind Chhabra

CHANDIGARH, May 9

Three years ago, Sanjeev Arora was a Ludhiana industrialist with no appetite for politics. On Saturday morning, he woke up to roughly 20 Enforcement Directorate officers parked outside his official residence in Chandigarh’s Sector 2. By the time the day was done, Sanjeev Arora, described by many as the Punjab’s most powerful cabinet minister, was under arrest.

The ED took Arora, 62, into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in what the agency described as a fresh case — separate from earlier searches — involving alleged large-scale financial fraud. He is expected to be produced before a local court on Saturday, where the agency will seek his remand for questioning.

A Reluctant Politician, an Unlikely Rise

Arora’s entry into politics in 2022 was, by most accounts, not his idea. The Aam Aadmi Party was looking for a credible business face ahead of what it correctly anticipated would be a sweep in the Punjab assembly elections. Arora, known in Ludhiana’s industrial circles but largely absent from political life, was persuaded to contest the Rajya Sabha seat from Punjab in April 2022.

He was not considered a natural fit. People who knew him from his years in business describe a man who preferred working to networking — someone who would show up briefly at social gatherings and leave early. Politics, with its compulsory theatrics, was not his terrain.

But the AAP needed someone like him more than he needed the party. Punjab’s urban, Hindu, business community — concentrated in Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar — was a constituency the party wanted to hold as the BJP sharpened its pitch to the same voters. Arora, with his Ludhiana base and business credibility, was a natural bridge.

He was inducted into the Bhagwant Mann cabinet in July 2023 after winning the Ludhiana West bypoll, necessitated by the death of MLA Gurpreet Gogi. From there, his ascent inside the government was swift.

Sanjeev Arora: Four Portfolios, One Man

By the time of his arrest, Sanjeev Arora held four of the most consequential portfolios in the Mann government: Power, Industries, Investment Promotion and Local Government. No other minister came close to that concentration of administrative authority.

Within the power department, he made his presence felt quickly. The removal of a senior IAS officer as administrative secretary — following reported differences over land transactions and procurement processes — signalled that Arora was not a ceremonial minister content to rubber-stamp files. People who worked around him describe a man who read files carefully, kept long hours and moved decisions faster than most of his cabinet colleagues.

That reputation reached Delhi. The AAP high command, which had watched earlier attempts to project business-friendly faces fall flat, saw in Arora someone who delivered administratively while fitting the political profile they needed.

 His personal style reinforced the image. Despite enormous wealth and growing political power, Arora maintained a low public profile. Even opponents in the Ludhiana West bypoll, where political campaigns rarely stay civil, acknowledged him as someone of genuine personal decency.

What the ED Alleges

The ED’s case, as described by official sources, centres on a scheme involving Arora’s businesses that is different in character from the earlier land fraud probe.

According to the agency, investigators detected large-scale money laundering allegedly carried out through a scheme involving fictitious GST purchases of mobile phones running into tens of crores. The alleged mechanism: multiple fake purchase invoices obtained from non-existent firms in Delhi were used to claim fraudulent input tax credit, GST refunds on export credit, and duty drawback benefits — effectively defrauding the exchequer while funnelling money in a round-trip from Dubai back to India.

Searches on Saturday covered five premises across Delhi, Gurugram and Chandigarh, including the offices of Hampton Sky Realty Limited — a real estate company promoted by Arora’s family — and his official residence.

ED officials characterised Sanjeev Arora as “non-cooperative” during the probe, a description the agency typically uses to justify remand custody when producing an accused before a magistrate.

The Saturday arrest follows two earlier rounds of searches — one in October 2024, focused on alleged diversion of industrial land for residential use, and another within the past month. The October searches had examined whether land allotted to companies linked to Arora as illegally converted for residential development and sold without the required clearances.

AAP’s Political Counter

The arrest landed in the middle of a charged political moment. West Bengal assembly elections had just concluded, and senior AAP leaders were quick to frame the ED’s action as a continuation of what they have described as a pattern of central agency deployment against non-BJP state governments.

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal drew a pointed historical parallel, comparing the Modi government’s use of central agencies against Punjab to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s campaigns against the Sikh Gurus — a comparison calibrated to resonate in a state where that history carries deep emotional weight.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, for his part, noted that three searches of Arora’s premises over one year had so far yielded no public evidence of wrongdoing, and vowed Punjab would not yield to what he called an unethical alliance between the ED and the BJP.

Whether the political framing holds depends largely on what the agency produces before the court. For now, the Mann government has lost, at least temporarily, the minister it could least afford to.

Opposition leaders react

If AAP leaders were hoping for any sympathy or support from other parties, it surely didn’t come from Shiromani Akali Dal. SAD senior leader Bikram Singh Majithia said ED arrest of Sanjeev Arora has exposed the seriousness of the alleged fraud and financial irregularities network operating in Punjab.

Political damage

Arora’s arrest removes from the cabinet the man who served as its most direct link to Punjab’s industrial community — a relationship the AAP has invested heavily in maintaining ahead of the 2027 assembly elections. How long he remains in custody, and what the courts make of the ED’s evidence, will determine the political damage.

For Sanjeev Arora personally, the trajectory has been vertiginous: from textile boardrooms to Rajya Sabha to the most powerful seat in a state cabinet — and now, a courtroom in Chandigarh.

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