Gurgaon:
Ashok Khemka, a senior bureaucrat in Haryana, is straddling two giant controversies.
One is the fact that he has cancelled a 58-crore deal between entrepreneur Robert Vadra and real estate giant DLF for 3.5 acres, alleging that the Haryana government bent the rules for the businessman.
The other is his removal as Director General, Land Consolidation, three days after he asked for every piece of land bought or sold by Mr Vadra to be studied for its "real value."
Mr Vadra is the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, often described as the most powerful politician in the country.
His business deals with India's largest real estate company, DLF, have been derided by Arvind Kejriwal , who formed a political party earlier this month whose putative agenda is exposing corruption within other parties, and then helping to combat it.Mr Kejriwal alleges that DLF gave Mr Vadra heavily-discounted luxury apartments and interest-free loans in Haryana, where the Congress has been in power since 2004. Mr Kejriwal says in return for the special treatment to Mr Vadra, the Haryana government bestowed upon DLF large favours for its many projects in the state. Mr Vadra, DLF and the government say that's incorrect.
Which is why Mr Khemka's actions - and their consequences - are generating so much heat. Mr Khemka says he has not linked his transfer to his inquiry against Mr Vadra. On October 8, he says, he initiated the probe. On October 11, he received his transfer orders. On October 12, he went ahead with a letter that asked officials in four districts of Gurgaon to study Mr Vadra's land transactions.
And then on Monday, on his last day in office, he cancelled the mutation in favour of DLF of a 3.5-acre plot bought from Mr Vadra over a period of four years. Effectively, this means that DLF can no longer be considered the owner of the property. The government says Mr Khemkar's decision is incorrect, "against the principles of natural justice" because it has not sought explanations from DLF or Mr Vadra, and that a three-member committee will study the deal and complete its inquiry in a month.
(Watch: The Vadra-DLF controversy)But the 3.5 acres that Mr Vadra bought and sold seem landscaped with special favours. In February 2008, Mr Vadra bought the land for 7.5 crores. The very next day, the land had been mutated in his favour by the government, a process which usually takes between three to six months. A month later, the Haryana government licensed Mr Vadra's Skylight Hospitality Limited to build a housing project on most of this land- so now, land acquired cheaply had been cleared for commercial activity. This escalated the value of the property so sharply that three months after he bought the land, DLF was willing to pay Mr Vadra 58 crores for it.
(Case timeline)Two payments were made in 2008. And by October 2009, DLF had paid Mr Vadra 50 crores for the land. Yet,in January 2011, the Haryana government renewed the housing license to Mr Vadra's Skylight Limited, even though Mr Khemka says that by this point, DLF had completed more than 80% of its payment. The fact that the payments were staggered over four years (the final instalment was given in July ) could have helped Mr Vadra's firm defer capital gains taxes till this year.
Mr Khemka cancelled the deal because he said that among other violations of guidelines, an unauthorized official had sanctioned the transfer of the property from Mr Vadra to DLF; the government said this evening that is inaccurate.
(Read: Khemka transferred 43 times in 20 years)Three days before he was asked to exit his office as head of Land Consolidation, Mr Khemka ordered that Mr Vadra's land deals in Haryana be studied to determine their "real value"- he felt that land may have been under-valued to avoid taxes, and that the government lost revenue as a result. The government today said that in the 58-crore deal, that was not the case.
Mr Khemka claims he is being punished for "being upright and exposing scams" - he says he has not linked his exit to his inquiry against Mr Vadra. He has also been focusing on exposing alleged scams that saw politicians, bureaucrats and real estate developers corner panchayat land.
The Haryana government says that what the bureaucrat has failed to reveal is that he asked for a new job. That is, however, not quite the case. Mr Khemka had asked his boss, the Chief Secretary, to remove him as Special Collector, a post he held along with Director General, Land Consolidation. The government says that because both offices are traditionally managed by the same person, Mr Khemka had to go.
(Read: Khemka rejects Haryana govt's claim) "I had pleaded that the post of Special Collector is below my rank," Mr Khemka told NDTV yesterday evening, adding, "So I had requested the Chief Secretary to relieve me of it. But I never asked the government to remove me as Director General, Land Consolidation."
The government suggests that Mr Khemka is misrepresenting the facts to make it seem like he was removed because he ordered an inquiry against Mr Vadra. "The transfer of Shri Khemka was neither out of any malice nor done abruptly," it said in a press release this evening.
(Read full statement)