File pic: IAS officer Ashok Khemka
Senior bureaucrat Ashok Khemka has written to the Haryana government alleging that he is being persecuted for cancelling a land deal struck in the state by Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, the country's most powerful politician.
The Congress is in power in Haryana with Bhupinder Hooda as chief minister.
"I am being publicly humiliated for doing my job," Mr Khemka has said in his letter , addressed to PK Chaudhery, the chief secretary of the government. (
Read full letter here)
He writes, "My biggest 'crime' of course was my cancellation of the mutation by Shri Robert Vadra's Sky Light Hospitality to DLF Universal on October, 2012. It is not difficult to see that that is the real crime or misdemeanor for which I am being punished."
Within days of nullifying that deal, he was transferred from his position as the man heading the department that handled all land registration. The Haryana government then over-ruled his decision and has prepared two chargesheets against him.
One accuses him of exercising powers he did not have in voiding the Vadra-DLF transaction. The second charges him with failing his duties as the man running the Haryana Seeds Development Corporation (HSDC), a post he held for a few months before he was transferred once again to his current job as Director General of Archives in Chandigarh.
Mr Khemka has accused the state-run HSDC of being riddled with corruption, a charge now being investigated by the CBI.
His supporters say that he is being punished for reporting the alleged scam to the CBI without clearance from the state government.