Vadra land deal returns to haunt the Congress
The Congress was evidently wrong to assume that, by shunting out an honest bureaucrat and arming itself with a few court orders, it could do away with the irksome land scam involving its party president's son-in-law. In the run-up to the Haryana Assembly election, the dubious deal between Mr Robert Vadra and real estate major DlF of over 3.53 acres of land in Shikohpur village in Gurgaon district, has returned to haunt the party and the Government it leads in the State. The matter has been brought up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while campaigning in Haryana, and it fits perfectly within the BJP's overall good governance/anti-corruption electoral plank. Real estate has been Haryana's proverbial cash cow in these past decades, and successive Congress regimes have milked it for all it is worth. In the early years, the crores of easy money that flowed into the State, through the real estate route, helped present the Haryana Government's image of competence on the delivery of basic public goods such as effective urban planning and a strong law and order system. But now, as day-long power cuts and soaring crime rates have become routine, the people see through the glass façades of glitzy malls and high-rise apartment complexes. They realise how the politician-builder nexus is eating into the vitals of the State, often with the active support of elected representatives. The Vadra-DlF land deal, in which the Government of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda is widely perceived to be involved, fuels this public perception. The legalities of the deal, which will be sorted out in the courts over time, don't really make much of a difference. In the minds of the people, it is yet another brazen example of how the incumbent regime has betrayed its mandate. That this comes with the added hounding of an upright bureaucrat, who has since been hailed as a national hero, makes matters worse for the Congress and its cronies.
That despite the public backlash it faced, when the scam first came to light, the Congress has still continued down the same path of political chicanery to secure the interests of its first family, speaks volumes. This past July, the State reversed former Director General (Consolidation) Ashok Khemka's order cancelling the deal. It thereby legitimised the dubious transaction with an official seal of approval. Irrespective of whether this was a violation of the model code of conduct, as Mr Modi has suggested, the tearing hurry with which the deal was cleared, remains suspect. The decision came soon after the Congress received a drubbing in the general election. Having been reduced to their weakest ever position in the lok Sabha, party bosses possibly calculated that they may also lose most of the State Assemblies, including Haryana. Given that a ‘less friendly' regime in the State could jeopardise Mr Vadra's business interest, the Congress allegedly acted quickly to secure the deal.