Complainant in MSCB Case, Surinder Mohan Arora hogs limelight

MUMBAI: Surinder Mohan Arora is a Mumbai-based businessman who had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from the Mumbai North-west constituency.
Arora got just 0.13% of the votes polled. While that did not make news, he is at the centre of media and public attention now. In the past week, he has received multiple queries from politicians across party lines, and also from anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, the 64-year-old told ET.

Arora is the complainant in the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank (MSC Bank) case, which has come in media limelight after the Enforcement Directorate this week named Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar in its probe.

“I received a call from Hazare who has hailed my move and expressed his support. Other than Hazare there are many politicians from across the political spectrum including those in the current dispensation (BJP) who are calling and praising me for my battle to clean up MSC Bank,” said Arora, the founder-president of the little-known Bharat Jan Aadhar Party.

Arora wouldn’t comment when asked if he would contest the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra.

The affidavit that Arora filed during the Lok Sabha elections said he was an industrialist. He had assets worth Rs 33.66 crore and liabilities of Rs 2.12 lakh. He had listed four bank accounts, including one in an MSC Bank branch at Khar in Mumbai, where he had Rs 36,208, showed the affidavit.

It’s Arora’s statement that has formed the ground of the ED’s complaint in the stringent antimoney laundering law against the Pawars — Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar.

On Sharad Pawar, Arora, in his statement before the Mumbai Police, had said: “I say since the loans were disbursed at the behest of the ‘kingpin’ such as Sharad Pawar, who exercise absolute control over the affairs of MSC Bank and district central co-operative banks in Maharashtra and without whose prior approval no loans were sanctioned.”