Justice Dhingra commission should clear the air
Businessman Robert Vadra has welcomed an inquiry that the Haryana Government has ordered into recent land deals he had been involved in during the Congress-led UPA tenure at the Centre and the party's Government in the State. He has also hoped that the probe would not be used as “vendetta politics”. Mr Vadra perhaps apprehends that his being the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi could result in the new Bharatiya Janata Party regime in Haryana and the BJP-led coalition at the Centre using the investigation to smear his image.
He is clearly over-reacting. In the first place, the probe has not even formally begun. So, there is no indication that it is going to be a witch-hunt. Moreover, the one-man judicial commission is headed by retired justice SN Dhingra, who has had an excellent track record and is reputed for his integrity. There is no reason, thus, to pre-judge either the process or the final outcome. In any case, Mr Vadra has been maintaining innocence all throughout.
He should have, therefore, even less reason to fear the probe. Nobody is above the law. His deals had been red-flagged during the Congress regimes in New Delhi and Haryana, and much heat and dust had been generated in the process. Mr Vadra has been a controversial figure for a long while now, and it is not as if the BJP has suddenly unearthed a scam.
He and his supporters, including those from within the Congress who have batted for him in debates inside television studios while at the same time maintained that the businessman had nothing to do with the party, have not been able to until now satisfactorily able to explain how he got land at low rates, which he then sold to a prominent builder at much higher prices and pocketed a cool sum in the process. They have also not been able to justify the lightening-quick clearances Mr Vadra's deals got from the then State Government.
The Vadra camp has hit out at the allegations, claiming that he has as much right to do business as any other Indian national and that there were many others that have similarly benefitted. That may be so, but Mr Vadra happens to be a member of the Congress's powerful first family, and so any hint at short-circuiting of rules in clearances is bound to raise eyebrows.
While the Congress may want to call it vendetta politics, the fact is that the BJP had made the Vadra land deal a big issue during the 2014 election campaign, and had also made it evident that it would launch an inquiry if it came to power.
The surprise, if any, is that the order to investigate should have come as late as nearly one year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Government took charge in New Delhi. Perhaps the delay was because the Assembly election was due in Haryana. A new Government — that of the BJP led by Chief Ml Khattar — is in the saddle there. It is interesting to note here that Mr Khattar had not made it his priority on assuming office to go after Mr Vadra’s deals.
Instead, he had remarked that there were many people-oriented issues before him which he needed to take care of first. This in itself had demonstrated an absence of witch-hunt. We should now soon know the truth behind Mr Vadra's land deals. Until then, let us not speculate or cast aspersions.