It seems that trouble for the ruling Congress at the Centre is far from over as Robert Vadra’s land deal in a village in Haryana has again returned to perturb the party and its chief as whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka in his reply to the State Government has claimed that Vadra falsified documents to execute the deal.
Khemka in his capacious 100-page reply submitted on May 21 before the three-member enquiry committee, set up in October 2012 to look into Vadra DlF deal has said that Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law executed a series of “sham transactions” for acquiring 3.53 acres of land in Shikohpur village of Gurgaon.
According to Khemka’s notes, the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) issued various types of colony licences for a total of 21,366 acres of land in the last 8 years of Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s tenure from 2005 to 2012. He pointed out that if the market premium for a colony licence is assumed to be as low as Rs 1 crore per acre, the land-licensing scam in the past eight years is worth roughly Rs 20,000 crore.
At the premium of Rs 15.78 crore per acre that Vadra had earned, this figure would jump to a staggering Rs 3.5 lakh crore. Khemka added that not just the sale deed through which Vadra became the owner of the land, but the balance sheets filed by Skylight Hospitality as on March 31, 2008 are also false. Skylight Hospitality, a company owned by Vadra, entered into an unregistered collaboration agreement with DlF Universal for 2.7 acres of land on August 5, 2008.
Both the sale deed of February 12, 2008 through which Vadra’s company Skylight Hospitality bought land from Onkareshwar Properties and letter of intent for granting a commercial license to his company issued by DTCP in March 2008 are sham transactions which enabled Vadra to collect market premium. Vadra “pocketed” a huge premium on a commercial license through money that he could account for.
DTCP ignored rules and regulations to allow crony capitalists operating as middlemen to flourish and appropriate market premium of a license. “If there was no payment as alleged in the registered deed, can it be said that the registered deed conferred ownership title over the said land upon Skylight Hospitality by virtue of the sham sale,” said Khemka. “The DTCP aided Vadra in making these fraud transactions,” he added.
When contacted, Khemka told The Pioneer that I have elaborated everything in my reply and right now I do not want to say anything on this issue. However, Haryana Chief Secretary P K Chaudhary confirmed about receiving the reply sent by Khemka on the issue and told The Pioneer that we are examining the reply, in which these allegations have been leveled.
While raising questions on the role of DTCP, Khemka said that “DTCP was aware of the fact that the actual developer of the colony would be DlF and the routing of the transaction through Skylight was a subterfuge to remit part premium into the accounts of Skylight Hospitality Private ltd.” The DTCP permitted Skylight to transfer the license to DlF in April 2012, and the licensed land was finally sold to DlF on September 18, 2012.
By allowing the transfer of license issued in the name of Skylight to DlF, the DTCP created a black market for trading in licenses which were later sold or transferred with ‘permission’ of the authority for a fat consideration, to the real developers. Khemka has demanded a white paper on the transfer of all such licenses permitted in the past to “expose the syndicate which siphoned a huge amount from the taxpayers’ money.”
Anupam Gupta, senior advocate of Punjab and Haryana High Court and counsel of Ashok Khemka said contents of the report submitted by Ashok Khemka are legitimate. According to Section 82 of the Registration Act, 1908, the penalty for making false statements, delivering false copies or transaction, false impersonation, and abetment is punishable with imprisonment up to 7 years. INlD leader Abhay Chautala, who is also MlA from Ellenabad said that his party had raised this issue time and again in the Vidhan Sabha, but the Speaker always tried to suppress it.
All transactions have been done by the Hooda Government to appease Sonia Ghandi and should be probed thoroughly.