Action vindicates in CAG report, but continue to suffer: Khemka

Real culprits sit in judgement over me. My pain and suffering may help to detox and cleanse the body politic, he tweeted

A senior IAS officer of Haryana, Ashok Khemka (pictured), on Thursday said his action in Vadra-DLF land-licence deal has been “vindicated in the CAG report but he continues to suffer the stigma of charge sheet”. He said this in a tweet reacting to the CAG report.

During the Congress government, Khemka had ordered the scrapping of the land deal between Skylight Hospitality (owned by Robert Vadra) and DLF, terming it as illegal. However, the previous Hooda government gave clean chit to Vadra in the land deal.

In another tweet he said, “Real culprits sit in judgement over me. My pain and suffering may help to detox and cleanse the body politic.”

In his third tweet, Khemka, presently posted as state transport commissioner, said, “Black-marketing of licenses and permits to cronies is loot of public wealth. Will action be taken against the black-marketers?”

“Undue favours” to builders, including Robert Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality, by the Haryana government during the Congress regime has now come under attack.

In its report for the year 2013-14, tabled in the Haryana Assembly on Thursday, the official auditor has come down heavily on the town and country planning department.

"....the department neither at the time of granting in-principle approval nor at the time of formal approval for transfer of licenses ensured that net profit beyond 15 per cent of the total cost accrues to public exchequer.

"This enabled the developers to earn huge profits merely by selling the land while the government had to forego sizeable amount," the CAG report said.

The BJP and other Congress rivals had trained their guns on the previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda government accusing it of showing favours to Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, in his land deal with realty giant DLF.

Though the report did not name Vadra, his company, Skylight Hospitality, was named. Skylight Hospitality, the report noted, sold a prime 3.5 acre piece of land in Manesar in Gurgaon district to DLF in 2008 for Rs 58 crore.