Law will take own course on Vadra: Haryana CM

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar Sunday said that law will take its own course in the controversial land deals of Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

"All the promises made to the people of Haryana, especially on clean, transparent and corruption-free government, would be fulfilled. Whatever is in the interest of the 2.5 crore people of the state would be done," Khattar told media persons here.

The response from the chief minister came in response to questions regarding Vadra's reaction to a news crew in a New Delhi hotel Saturday night.

Vadra Saturday snapped at the TV crew when he was questioned about an impending probe into his company's land deals in Haryana.

Khattar's comments are being seen as a softening of stand of the new Bharatiya Janata Party government on the land scams during the Hooda regime. The land scams were a major poll issue raised by the BJP in the Oct 15 assembly polls.

Two senior Haryana ministers, Ram Bilas Sharma, who is also the Haryana BJP president, and Anil Vij, had earlier said that a judicial probe would be ordered and no one would be spared.

"We are certainly opening those cases. A sitting high court judge will inquire into these," said Sharma, the senior-most minister in the Khattar government.

Vadra has been accused of making millions of rupees in land deals done during the tenure of the Hooda government in Haryana between March 2005 and October 2014. One of the deals, worth Rs. 58 crore, was with realty major DLF.

Vij had 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.,"

--Indo-Asian News Service

js/vd