Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar at an event in Gurgaon. (PTI Photo)
A day after an FIR was lodged against former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and real estate companies DLF and Onkareshwar Properties, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that the allegations made by the complainant will be “investigated” and action will be taken against whoever is found to be involved.
“We have been fighting against corruption from the first day. Of the material that we had regarding such matters, some is under consideration with the CBI, some before the Supreme Court, and the verdict in all of those will come from those agencies. This subject too is an old one, but a private person has courageously registered this FIR, and the allegations made by him will be investigated. Action will be taken against whoever is found to be involved,” said Khattar.
The complaint by a Nuh resident, on the basis of which an FIR was registered at Khedki Daula police station in Gurgaon on Saturday evening, raised allegations regarding the same 3.5-acre piece of land in Shikohpur area of Gurgaon’s Sector 83 that had been brought up in 2012 by IAS officer Ashok Khemka while he was the director general, Consolidation of Land Holdings, Haryana.
The complainant has alleged that M/s Skylight Hospitality, of which Vadra is the director, was launched in 2007 with a capital of Rs 1 lakh but, a year later, purchased the 3.5-acre plot from Onkareshwar Properties for Rs 7.5 crore. The FIR states that, following this, Vadra obtained permission from the Department of Town and Country Planning to develop a “commercial colony” on the land, which was then sold to DLF for Rs 58 crore.
The Chief Minister on Sunday also spoke on findings of the Dhingra Commission and the possibility of those being made public in the future. The commission had been set up in 2014 to probe some land deals made during the 10-year tenure of the Hooda-led Congress government — these included land deals in Sector 83 as well.
The panel submitted its report to the state government in August 2016, but its findings are yet to be made public, with the Hooda government challenging the constitution of the commission in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
“The High Court has put a stay on that, after which the matter has gone to the Supreme Court and, as soon as we get permission from the court, the information in the Dhingra Commission’s report will be made public because that was also in relation to this subject. However, until the report is published, we cannot do anything,” said Khattar.