An announcement on Friday in the London Gazette, which publishes the government’s statutory notices, said King Charles III had directed that the businessman’s Commander of the Order of the British Empire would be “cancelled and annulled”.
Millionaire Lord Ranger, who has donated some £1.5 million to the Conservative Party and who was made a peer by Theresa May in 2019, three years after he was made a CBE for “services to business and community cohesion”.
The Forfeiture Committee, which decides on whether to strip someone of an honour, is understood to have taken the decision after considering Lord Ranger had brought the honours system into disrepute, in a series of tweets to the Sikh community, comments in the media about Pakistanis along with derogatory tweets to the Indian journalist.
Lord Ranger has suggested that the 1984 pogroms against Sikhs in India was the fault of Sikhs in Southall.
Last year, he was accused of using “deplorable” and “racially charged language” in an attack on a BBC documentary about the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a letter to the BBC Director General, Tim Davie, to complain about the film, he demanded “if your Pakistani-origin staff were behind this nonsense”.
Also last year, Ranger took to Social media to make a series of unfounded allegations against the London-based journalist Poonam Joshi after she had questioned him about him hosting representatives of an Indian fugitive cult leader Nithyananda accused of child abduction and rape at the House of Lords.
In a chain of Tweets, Ranger called Ms Joshi “a presstitute”, “toxic”, “an evil woman”, a “total disgrace” and the “epitome of filth and garbage”. He also falsely alleged that Ms Joshi’s husband was a domestic abuser and warned her that “I will teach you a lesson”.
He was referred to the House of Lords Standards Commissioner over the Tweets and in June 2023 he was found by the commissioner to have harassed and bullied Ms Joshi and that he had abused his power by “persistently undermining, humiliating and denigrating Ms Joshi”.
Lord Ranger apologised to Ms Joshi for his conduct and agreed to settle a defamation claim which he had brought against her.
At the time he was asked to undertake social media training and re-attend a seminar on the parliamentary behaviour code. He was also stripped of his Conservative whip, which was reinstated in November this year.
It’s understood that while Lord Ranger apologised for his actions, the Forfeiture Committee considered his behaviour combined with the fact he was made a CBE for his work on community cohesion meant it was appropriate for him to be stripped of the honour.