Hours after Manohar lal Khattar took oath as Haryana’s Chief Minister, his Cabinet Ministers on Sunday said that the new State Government will investigate all controversial land deals made by previous Hooda Government in Haryana.
“We are certainly opening those cases. A sitting High Court judge will inquire into these,” said Ram Bilas Sharma, Cabinet Minister in Khattar’s government.
Another Cabinet Minister, Anil Vij said, “We will investigate controversial ‘land scams’ made by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. The state government will inquire into all land scams including the one involving Vadra land deal and a sitting Judge will probe the case.”
Vij, said: “land is the biggest scam that has taken place in Haryana. Over 70,000 acres land was acquired (by the government) from innocent farmers and allotted to people after making huge profits.”
“We will get every inch of this land scam probed. Anyone found guilty in that, whether any official, Robert Vadra or Bhupinder Singh Hooda, we will not spare anyone,” said Vij.
The Minister added the Congress and other parties had pushed Haryana deep into corruption in the past 48 years. The BJP government will also see whether the law was violated in acquiring land for different projects during previous Hooda government in the state.”
Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made Vadra’s deals a major campaign issue in the just-concluded assembly elections, following through his party’s attack on Sonia’s controversial son-in-law during the lok Sabha elections.
The controversy relates to Haryana government validating the mutation of the land sold by a company owned by Vadra, to DlF. Vadra has been accused of making millions of rupees in land deals during the tenure of the Hooda government in Haryana between March 2005 and October 2014.
According to legal experts, if the new BJP government wants, it can uphold orders passed by whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka who had cancelled the deal. Khemka had cancelled the mutation of the land deal on October 15, 2012, sparking a controversy after which the Haryana government had charge-sheeted him for acting beyond his jurisdiction.
Haryana’s IAS officer Khemka had alleged that Priyanka Gandhi’s spouse received illegal favours from the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government. The officer has been shunted to a low profile post since then and heads the Haryana archives department.
Earlier this week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had also indicated that the BJP government in Haryana will order a probe into the land deals of Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law.