Robert Vadra-DLF land deal: 42 transfers in 21 years and holding on

It is like some scoundrels rape a girl, and fingers are pointed towards the girl saying it was her fault," says Ashok Khemka. On October 11, the Haryana-cadre IAS officer was transferred for the 42nd time in his 21-year career, days after he began looking into alleged undervaluation of properties registered by Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.

It was the third major "scam" he had unearthed in the past six months, and his second transfer in just over 100 days. The latest order removed Khemka as Director General, Consolidation of Land Holdings and Land Records, and posted him as Managing Director, Haryana Seeds Development Corporation. The corporation post was earlier being held as additional charge by an IAS officer who is 12 years junior to Khemka.

Before this, Khemka was moved out soon after he reported a scam in state government's electronics firm, Hartron. He lasted there as MD for 50 days. This was about the time he spent as DG (Consolidation) where, based on his assertions of a multi-crore scam in transfer of prime chunks of gram panchayat land in Gurgaon and other parts of Haryana to private builders, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed all such transfers and called it a "mammoth fraud".

In a letter he sent to Haryana Chief Secretary P K Chaudhery on October 12, a day after his transfer as DG (Consolidation), Khemka called the move "deliberate and mala fide", to punish him "due to some vested elements in the political-bureaucratic hierarchy affected by the exposure of the scams in consolidation". "Several hundred crores worth of panchayat lands were transferred to realtor companies, which were created a few days earlier. Forest and hill areas were sought to be partitioned under the garb of consolidation to corner prime plots near highways to build farm-houses or resorts," Khemka wrote.

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