A political slugfest erupted on Saturday following senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka’s damning allegations against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. The Congress sought to be aggressive by accusing the BJP of having a role in it, questioning the timing of the surfacing of the report and charging Khemka with playing into the hands of the principal Opposition party.
Khemka has alleged that Vadra had “falsified documents” for 3.53 acres of land in Gurgaon and “pocketed” large premium on a commercial colony license. In his 100-page reply to the Haryana Government’s three-member enquiry committee set up in October, 2012 to look into the issue, Khemka alleged that Vadra had executed a series of “sham transactions” for the plot of land in Shikohpur village of Gurgaon.
He alleged that Haryana’s Department of Town and Country Planning aided Vadra in making these sham transactions.
While Congress spokesman Meem Afzal questioned the timing of the report and said it raised doubts about the BJP having a hand behind it, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda asserted his Government did not favour any party. “The Chief Secretary is seized of the matter and he is looking into it,” Hooda said.
“I feel the BJP is behind it. The BJP is politicising the issue. This man is playing into the hands of the BJP and an attempt is being made to draw a parallel between this issue and that of Durga Shakti Nagpal in UP, which is wrong” he said.
The timing of raking up the issue by Khemka again also “raises doubts” as it has come when Durga’s issue is in the spotlight, he claimed.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said: “Whatever facts have come to public domain, it is a serious issue. The Congress owes an explanation. This is not a private matter. When there are charges of falsification, it needs to be properly investigated.”
BJP leader Balbir Punj demanded that Sonia take the same moral high ground in case of Khemka as she had done in the matter of Durga’s “victimisation” by the Akhilesh Yadav Government.
For her part, BJP spokesperson Meenakshi lekhi said that the way Congress is going, it will have to open a factory of clean chits.
Interestingly, Samajwadi Party, which had recently raked up the Vadra controversy in response to Sonia’s letter to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention in the Durga issue, made a U-turn. Its leader Naresh Agarwal criticised Khemka for breaching the oath of secrecy and service rule and trying to politicise the issue by taking it up on TV channels. He also demanded disciplinary action against the officer for breaking service rules.
“Babu ho babu ki tarah raho aur boss ban-ne ki koshish mat karo (You are a bureaucrat, behave like one and don’t try to become the boss),” Agarwal said, adding the bureaucracy has to follow the policies devised by the elected Government. They should not try to embarrass them on the basis of information that they get from official files, he maintained.
However, the efforts of the SP leader to close ranks with other parties to demand action against officers who are embarrassing their political bosses failed to yield the desired result. Afzal said that there is no comparison between Khemka and Durga as the former is openly giving interviews to TV channels while the latter is following rules and has been victimized for acting against UP’s sand mafia.
“What is surprising is that when he gives an interview to TV channels, immediately after that BJP endorses his stand,” Afzal said, adding “it clearly shows that BJP is behind all this.”
He also sought to clarify that Khemka has only given a reply and not a report. The three-member committee consisting of senior officers had already given its report which had rejected Khemka’s contentions, he said.
However, AAP has lauded Khemka’s courage and asked him to join the party and contest elections against Hooda. It alleged that the Hooda Government is involved in massive corruption, cronyism and illegalities in the grant of licenses for colonization of 21,366 acres of agricultural land while Sonia is just shedding “crocodile tears” for Durga while allowing and abetting victimization of Khemka.