Ashok Khemka takes on Congress over missing Vadra land deal documents

Kolkata/Chandigarh: Asserting that he was charge sheeted with the prime objective of giving a clean chit to Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Ashok Khemka on Friday said key documents related to his business operations were now found to be missing from government files, and added that this was an indication and evidence of how the former Congress-led government in Haryana had set up a committee to overrule his decision to cancel the former's land deals.

"I was chargesheeted on the basis of a committee's report, which was constituted basically with the prime objective to give a clean chit to Robert Vadra's licensing transaction, to discredit me and to undo my orders. Technically, my orders could only have been challenged in the honourable high court. Instead of doing that, they constituted a committee of three IAS officers," Khemka told ANI in Kolkata.

Khemka further said that he wanted an examination of the file to reply to the charge sheet, but was denied permission. He stated that he did not get any response after he sought the file under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, following which he made an application to the State Information Commission (SIC) in appeal, which ordered that the relevant noting be provided to him.

Khemka said that despite the order, however, on the last date of hearing on December 17, the notings weren't supplied to him because they had been detached from the main file.

"Despite the order, they say that the notings cannot be supplied at this stage because the notings have been detached from the main file. The main file has been sent to all kinds of unauthorized persons in the office of the then chief minister," he added.

The IAS officer further said that he complained to the State Information Commissioner about the unauthorized detachment of the noting, stating it was a very serious matter and that the noting sheets must be supplied to him.

"So, I made a complaint to the State Information Commissioner that you must impose punitive damages and also brought the matter to the notice of the chief secretary that this is a very serious matter and these noting sheets have been detached in an unauthorized manner. They must be supplied to me. How come they have been detached? If the detachment of sheets is unauthorized, then action should be taken, and if they are missing or have been destroyed, then also action should be taken, because these are very sensitive documents that would go on to prove that how a committee of interested persons formed the committee in conspiracy with the political executive to give a clean chit to such transfers of licenses and the public loot and to discredit me and to hound me by issuing a charge sheet" Khemka added.

Haryana Chief Secretary P.K. Gupta, however, said that an inquiry has been ordered with regard to the missing pages from the crucial file.

"It is a fact that one page of the file is missing which is printed on both sides. I have seen the file today itself and that page is missing. For this... we are instituting an internal enquiry, and if somebody is guilty for this, we will take care of it," Gupta told ANI in Chandigarh.

"Besides that, we are trying to reconstruct the file. About six or seven months back, Mr. Khemka had asked for information under the Right to Information Act (RTI). The information was supplied to him and a copy of that was given to the Information Commissioner also. We are approaching the Information Commissioner's office to see if the copy of the file is available in that office, (if so) then we will get a photocopy and we will try to reconstruct the file," he added.

Khemka had earlier alleged that he was being persecuted for challenging the land deals involving Vadra. The senior bureaucrat has been in the news since October 2012 for canceling the mutation of Vadra's DLF land deal.