The Haryana government says Ashok Khemka, a senior bureaucrat in Haryana, has incorrectly cancelled a 58-crore land deal between Robert Vadra, who is the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and realty giant DLF. The government says a new inquiry will study the transaction. It has also said that contrary to his claims of being transferred from his job, Mr Khemka had gone to court to ask for a change in office.
Here's your 10-point cheat-sheet to this story:
In 2008, DLF agreed to pay 58 crores for 3.5 acres of land which had been bought by Mr Vadra in February that year for 7.5 crores. In a matter of three months, the value of the property shot up by 8 times because the Haryana government licensed Mr Vadra's company, Skylight Hospitality Ltd, to build a housing project on most of the land. (Case timeline)
A day after Mr Vadra bought the land, the plot was mutated in favour of Sky Light. That means that the title of the land was transferred to Mr Vadra within 24 hours of his purchase, a process that usually takes at least three months.
The first installment of the 58 crores was paid by DLF to Mr Vadra in June 2008. The property was formally transferred to DLF this September. Because the payments were distributed over a period of nearly four years, capital gains taxes, owed on the profitable deal, could have been legitimately deferred by Mr Vadra's company.
Yesterday, on his last day as Director, Land Consolidation, Mr Khemka cancelled the mutation in favour of DLF, which effectively means that the developer can no longer be considered the owner of the property. He said an unauthorised official had sanctioned the transfer.
The Haryana government has said today it disagrees with his decision; it has formed a committee which has been given a month to investigate the land deal. (Read full statement)
Mr Khemka was transferred from his office last week, three days after he asked for an inquiry to determine "the real value" of all land bought or sold by Mr Vadra in Haryana after 2005. He says he felt that to evade stamp duty or taxes, the properties may have been registered at below their true market worth. Today, the Haryana government said that in the 58-crore deal, the land was not under-valued.
Mr Khemka told NDTV today that his transfer was "demoralizing and dehumanizing." But the Haryana government says that Mr Khemka has failed to disclose that he had gone to court, asking to be removed as Special Collector, a post he held along with Director, Consolidation. The Haryana government says that traditionally, both offices are assigned to the same person. (Khemka transferred 43 times in 20 years)
While he had not shared the details of his appeal in court with the media, what he had asked for was to be relieved of one of his two positions. The government appears to be exploiting that request to move him out of the land registration department altogether.
"I had pleaded that the post of Special Collector is below my rank," Mr Khemka told NDTV this 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."
Accusing the bureaucrat of misrepresenting the reasons for his transfer, the Haryana government says, "He has tried to link this transfer to certain actions that he has taken on subsequent dates without any basis."
Post a comment