The Congress and the ruling BJP engaged in a war of words following Dhingra Panel’s reported indictment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra in the controversial land deals in Haryana.
While the Congress said constitution of Dhingra Commission was a mere cog in the wheel of malicious witch-hunt propagated by the BJP, the BJP said the Modi Government believed in “upholding the law” and will not brook any violation.
AICC chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala on Wednesday said that even before Justice SN Dhingra submitted the report to the Haryana Government, portions of the report were leaked to the Press and aired on most television channels. He said the BJP Governments at the Centre and Haryana have run a political agenda of vendetta and revenge for years to slander and vilify Opposition.
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar rejected the Congress’ accusation of running a campaign of “slander and vilification” against its chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law, saying it is a “fair Government” that won’t do anything out of malice, a “monopoly” of Congress.
Vadra in a statement through his counsel said they always wanted to cooperate with the Dhingra panel but it never summoned him or any other official of his company.
“If the Government feels that my client is a bad man and they have a “jawai babu” report, why are they hiding the report.
let the report come out,” he told media daring the Government to make it public. Khaitan claimed his client’s company made all payments “totally legally” and “never sought any favours from any Government department whatsoever,” said Vadra’s lawyer Suman Khaitan.
BJP’s national secretary Shrikant Sharma said if somebody has committed a wrong, then he will have to pay the price and face the law. “The Congress is afraid because it believes that it has been caught out and so it is politicising this case of corruption. Even in the National Herald case it made similar allegations and now both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are out on bail. On the one hand Rahul Gandhi speaks about farmers and on the other his party cheats farmers of Haryana,” Sharma alleged.
On the other hand, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the constitution of the Commission was prompted by malice and political considerations. “It is case of ‘political vendetta’. I will not comment on the report before reading it,” said Hooda when asked to comment on being indicted in the report. Hooda had earlier demanded scrapping the Dhingra Commission.
Surjewala pointed out that while various State Governments issued licenced for 33,697.57 acres of land in Haryana, the Dhingra Commission was asked to inquire into only 16 cases of commercial licences totaling a mere 63.40 acres in Secror-83, Gurgaon. This only because it included a licence measuring 2.7 acres owned by Skylight Hospitality Private limited of Robert Vadra,” Surjewala said.
Surjewala alleged that even Khattar Government has granted numerous licences under the same licencing policy in 2015 and 2016. “Does that mean that there should be an inquiry against Khattar and the BJP GovernmentIJ” he said.
Indian National lok Dal (INlD) demanded a CBI probe into Change of land Use (ClUs) granted during the 10 years regime of Bhupinder Singh Hooda.