Unravel quid pro quo, Ashok Khemka tweets

CHANDIGARH: A day after Justice S N Dhingra commission submitted its report to Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar over the land deals of Gurgaon, senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka tweeted that "deals like DLF-SKYLIGHT are quid quo pro of something else, not the other way. The something else must be unravelled".
He was referring to the deal between the realty giant and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra's company which had sparked off a major political storm in 2012.
After submitting the report, Dhingra had said, "If there were no irregularities, there were no reasons for me to write 182-page report, I would have finished in a one-line statement." He had however refused to share the details of his report.
Khemka had cancelled mutation of the land deal between Vadra's company Skylight Hospitality and DLF in Shikohpur village of Gurgaon district on the ground that the assistant consolidation officer, who had sanctioned the change of title in the revenue record in favour of DLF, was not competent to do so.
Although the bureaucrat refused to comment on the report he was more forthcoming on the many inquiries that were started against him in 2012 and later which he has called a witch-hunt. "Of course, yes. The sinister design is to besmirch my reputation and credibility before finishing me. The witch-hunt seems unending," Khemka told TOI on Thursday.
Khemka feels that the Dhingra report must be made public. "Public money was spent on the commission of inquiry. This does not concern the security of the state. The earlier the report is made public, the better," he said.
Khemka had headed the Haryana land consolidation department in 2012 before he was shunted out. The officer did not comment on the value of land scams in Haryana. However, he said that some major scams have been enumerated in his reply to the charge sheet which was submitted to the state government on February 12, 2015.
"In one such case of Rohtak, the Supreme Court has recently passed an order on May 13, 2016 directing the state government to file quarterly action taken report, including action taken against officers involved in wrongly licensing and release of land to benefit the builder," said Khemka.
The previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda government had chargesheeted Khemka for "wrongly" cancelling the mutation of land deal but the Khattar government on November 4, 2015 had dropped the charge sheet paving the way for his promotion.
However, Khemka has been alleging "witch-hunt and hounding by the same inimical elements which were complicit with the earlier political executive in various scams involving land licensing, land releases, land consolidation..."