SN Dhingra panel report on Robert Vadra lands deals: Congress accuses BJP govt of political vendetta

New Delhi: Congress on Friday accused the BJP governments at the Centre and in Haryana of “deliberately” leaking the SN Dhingra Commission’s report to “d**n” Robert Vadra out of vendetta, despite a court injunction against its publication.

The Congress said the Punjab and Haryana High Court has issued injunction twice — in November last year and earlier this week — restraining release of the content of the report of the commission which probed alleged irregularities in grant of land licences to a firm owned by Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi alleged that the BJP-led governments were in the habit of deliberately leaking reports as the party believed in the politics of vendetta. “Some very strange things are happening. Both the central and the state governments and the ruling party are steeped in vendetta and blinded by rage and are deliberately leaking the so-called Dhingra Commission report,” he told reporters.

Singhvi came out in the defence for Vadra a day after Priyanka Gandhi Vadra issued a statement, saying her finances had nothing to do with that of her husband Robert Vadra or his company Skylight Hospitality, which is under the scanner of the Haryana government over its land deals with realty major DLF.

Singhvi also expressed surprise at Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu’s remark that their government did not leak the report, and said if it was not the government the only other persons who could have leaked it were Justice Dhingra himself or Vadra. “Who are making these selective, opportunistic, planted and directed leaks for what is known as damnation by innuendo and insinuation,” he said.

The Congress leader asked under which rule of law a report can “d**n” anyone without even calling or giving a notice to the person concerned. He claimed that no notice was sent to Vadra or former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda of the Congress, during whose tenure these land deals took place.

As per law, such a notice needs to be issued eight weeks before, he said. “Can you have a report to say Vadra did this and that or the other without a notice to him?” he asked.

Singhvi cautioned that no one is allowed to publish the Dhingra Commission report in view of an injunction in this regard by the high court. He said if anyone published the report, technically he would be committing contempt of court. “I am saying that you cannot examine the contents of the report at all,” he said.

Asked to comment on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s statement yesterday, Singhvi said, “That statement is self-explanatory. I am adding something more to it.”

Asked why she reacted in the matter, the Congress leader said she was “pained” with the report.

Priyanka had also said that any insinuation made about a five-acre piece of land she purchased in Faridabad were “false, baseless and defamatory” and represented “a deliberate, politically motivated and malicious campaign to besmirch and destroy her reputation”, as the land was purchased from her own rental income coming out of inherited property.