In what can spell trouble for Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Haryana has decided to constitute a high-level panel to investigate the land deals during the previous Congress regime.
The government under the leadership of Manohar Lal Khattar is in the last stage of finalising the panel, which is expected to be headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Swatanter Kumar.
A report published on a newspaper’s website has quoted BJP’s Haryana in-charge and national general secretary Anil Jain as saying, “We are surely going ahead with formalising a commission to look into all the land deals.”
In March this year, Comptroller and Auditor General in its report attacked the previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda regime saying that “undue favours” were given to builders, including Robert Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality.
In its report for the year 2013-14, tabled in the Haryana Assembly, the official auditor had come down heavily on the Town and Country Planning Department.
“….the department neither at the time of granting in-principle approval nor at the time of formal approval for transfer of licenses ensured that net profit beyond 15 percent of the total cost accrues to public exchequer, the CAG report said.
The BJP and other Congress rivals had trained their guns on the previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda government accusing it of showing favours to Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in his land deal with realty giant DLF.
Though the report did not name Vadra, his company, Skylight Hospitality, was named. Skylight Hospitality, the report noted, sold a prime 3.5 acre piece of land in Manesar in Gurgaon district to DLF in 2008 for Rs 58 crore.
Earlier, senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka had ordered the scrapping of the land deal, terming it as illegal. However, the previous Hooda government gave clean chit to Vadra in the land deal.