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.
The Central Bureau of Investigation in 1996 seized Rs. 3.6 lakh[1] in cash concealed in bags and suitcases from his official residence. The cash was allegedly collected by him committing irregularities in awarding a telecom contract. He was convicted and sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment by a Delhi court in 2002.[1]
On 18 November 2011 he was found guilty in a 1996 Telecom Scam [2] and was sentenced to five years in jail by a Delhi court. He was telecom minister in P V Narasimha Rao's cabinet.
Sukh 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. Sukh Ram escaped a failed attempt to assault him by a 35-year old young man who claimed to have been inspired by the ideals of Bhagat Singh and [Anna Hazare.[3]
As a coincidence, Sukh 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, A. Raja, is being lodged as an undertrial in what is widely knwon as the multi-core rupees 2G Spectrum scam.[4] The November 2011 sentencing of Sukh Ram is not related to 2G Spectrum Case but is related to the fraudulent procedures followed in the purchase of polythene-insulated jelly-filled cables [5] for the department of telecommunication of which he was minister. Sukh Ram has earlier been sentenced for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.[6]
Although convicted and sentenced by different courts in three different but related cases, Sukh Ram has avowed to fight his case in higher courts.[7]