BJP demands SC monitored investigation.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, the chief of India’s ruling UPA-coalition, is in the news again over alleged land deals across Congress-ruled states of Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan. The proceedings in Parliament got paralyzed today after the main opposition party, BJP, demanded setting up of a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe these deals.
“Our demand is that the SIT, which should be a multi-disciplinary authority to examine the alleged violation of the banking law, company law and income-tax law through these land deals, be set up and the probe monitored by the Supreme Court,” BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha told reporters outside Parliament.
In fact it was when Sinha raised the issue stating that his (Vadra’s) ‘’unique business model where crores of rupees are made without investing any money,’’ that the ruling Congress members in Lok Sabha rushed to the well of the house leading to its adjournment.
The opposition raised slogans like “Congress ka haath, damaad ke saath” (The hand of Congress is with the son-in-law) to which the Congress countered, “Congress ka haath Soniaji ke saath, desh ke saath, garib ke saath”, (the hand of Congress is with Sonia, with the country, with the poor).
A mocking Sinha spoke outside Parliament, “There may be many successful business models, but Robert Vadra has presented this country with a unique model where hundreds of crores of rupees can be made just by manipulation of land deals. I suggest that the one behind this unique business model be honored by starting a Vadra School of Management. Finance minister P Chidambaram should get himself admitted in this management school and taught how to earn profits worth hundreds of crores without making any investments. He can apply the model to resurrect the Indian economy and arrest the fall of the rupee.’’
Congress continued to oppose the BJP stance in the house for allowing a discussion on an individual.
Sinha retorted, “There is a person in our country who hasn’t gone to a business school and made hundreds of crores of money. He is a highly connected person and his name is Robert Vadra.”
Vadra has been in the news for several reasons recently. The latest one has been these land deals which surfaced after a career bureaucrat Ashok Khemka made public a report on a land deal between a company owned by Sonia’s son-in-law and a real estate giant DLF which he says smacked of forgery, falsification and fraudulent transactions. These offences he said attract punishments under section 82 of the Registration Act, 1908 which is an ‘’imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years, or with fine, or with both.’’
Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka’s inquiry report into the land deal between a company owned by Robert Vadra and DLF in Gurgaon has accused Vadra’s firm of forgery, falsification, and sham transactions. The offences punishable under section 82 of the Registration Act, 1908, can attract “imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years, or with fine, or with both,” the report says.
Khemka was the director general of land records and consolidation of land holdings and inspector general of registration, Haryana, when he ordered cancellation of the mutation of the land deal between Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality and DLF. Khemka was transferred by the state government, which later set up a three-member committee last October to look into his actions on the Skylight-DLF deal. Khemka’s report has now emerged in public through the detailed representation submitted by him to the state’s chief secretary in response to the inquiry ordered against him.
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