Haryana to get Vadra land deals probed

Within hours of assuming office, the new BJP government in Haryana Sunday said the land deals of Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and other land scams in the state will be probed.

"We are certainly opening those cases. A sitting high court judge will inquire into these," Ram Bilas Sharma, the senior-most minister in chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar's government, said here.

"(Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh) Hooda's main problem was that instead of looking after the interests of Haryana, he was safeguarding the interests of Sonia Gandhi," Sharma said.

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.

Another senior minister, Anil 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," Vij said.

He said the Congress and other parties had pushed Haryana deep into corruption in the past 48 years.

"Our priority is to take the state out of this mess. There is a new dawn in Haryana. People have a lot of expectations from this government," he added.