‘Robert Vadra used fake papers to acquire land’

Robert Vadra has once again found himself cornered over his alleged land deals in Haryana. IAS officer Ashok Khemka has alleged Vadra falsified documents for 3.53 acres of land in Gurgaon and pocketed a large premium on a commercial colony license.

In his 100-page reply submitted to Haryana government’s three-member enquiry committee set up in October last to look into Vadra-DLF deal, Khemka is understood to have alleged that Vadra executed a series of sham transactions for 3.53 acres of land in Shikohpur village of Gurgaon.

Khemka pointed out if the market premium for a colony licence is assumed to be as low as Rs one crore per acre, the land licensing scam in the past eight years is worth around Rs 20,000 crore.

‘At the premium of Rs 15.78 crore per acre that Vadra earned, this figure would jump to Rs 3.5 lakh crore,’ said Khemka in his report. The IAS officer also said Vadra pocketed a huge premium on a commercial license through money that he could not account for.

Khemka’s allegations against Vadra, who is the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is likely to embarrass the party leadership. Gandhi had recently written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene in the suspension of IAS officer Durga Nagpal, who had taken action against the sand mafia.

At that time Samajwadi Party had questioned the Congress president and asked if she should have written a similar letter when Khemka was targeted by the Hooda government in Haryana.

Khemka in 2012 had alleged irregularities in land dealings of Vadra and DLF in the state and asked the state government to give him a copy of the inquiry reports conducted by it. 

Khemka was transferred from Director General Consolidation of Land Holdings and Land Records cum-Inspector General of Registration to his present posting in the State’s Seed Development Corporation shortly after he initiated a probe into land dealings between Vadra and realty giant DLF. A probe report submitted by four deputy commissioners in Haryana had given a clean chit to Vadra over his land deals.

Khemka, who submitted his reply on 21 May, said both the sale deed of 12 February, 2008 through which Vadra’s company  Skylight Hospitality bought land from Onkareshwar Properties and Letter of Intent for granting a commercial license to his company issued by DTCP in March 2008 are sham transactions made to enable Vadra to collect market premium. 

The IAS officer alleged that Haryana’s Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) ignored rules and regulations to allow crony capitalists operating as middlemen to flourish and appropriate market premium of a license.

‘If there was no payment as alleged in the registered deed, can it be said that the registered deed conferred ownership title over the said land upon Skylight Hospitality by virtue of the sham sale,’  wrote Khemka in his report.

Khemka alleged that the DTCP permitted Skylight to transfer the license to DLF in April 2012 and the licensed land was finally sold to DLF on 18 September, 2012. 

‘By allowing the transfer of license issued in the name of Skylight to DLF, the DTCP created a black market for trading in licenses where cronies are issued licenses which are later sold or transferred with permission of the authority for a fat consideration to the real developers,’ wrote Khemka.