Robert Vadra-DLF land deal: Real estate agent close to Bhupinder Singh Hooda under scanner; Ashok Khemka demands CAG inquiry

CHANDIGARH: With IAS officer Ashok Khemka levelling fresh charges of impropriety in land deals involving Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, a real estate agent said to be close to Haryana Chef Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has also come under the scanner.

Satyanand Yajee, director of Onkareshwar Properties, which sold 3.5 acre in Shikohpur village to Vadra’s Skylight Properties, is general secretary of the All India Freedom Fighters Organisation and is in charge of constructing and maintaining a memorial in the name of Hooda’s father Chaudhary Ranbir Singh in Rohtak. Yajee refused to comment on the matter.

Khemka was ousted from his post in October 2012, when, as director general of land holdings and land records and inspector general of registration in the state, he set aside Vadra’s land deal with DLF, India’s biggest real estate developer. Meanwhile, in a response to a detailed questionnaire sent by ET, a DLF spokesman said: “No comments please.”

While the ruling Congress has accused Khemka of acting at the behest of BJP, the IAS officer has demanded an inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General into the role of the state government in facilitating the deals. The Om Prakash Chautala-led INLD has sought a probe by a sitting judge. “Onkareshwar Properties and Mark Buildtech Properties —which has (former Congress minister) Venod Sharma’s son Kartikeya Sharma as its director and owner of 99% of its shares — are registered on the same address of a flat in Nehru Place, New Delhi. Is that a coincidence?”

Khemka’s report says an independent inquiry must be instituted to ascertain what prompted Onkareshwar Properties to oblige Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality. The report estimates the land-licensing scam over the past eight years at Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 3.5 lakh crore.

Between 2005 and 2012, the department of town and country planning issued various types of colony licences for a total of 21,366 acre. The licences granted during the period is 71.5% of the total area licensed from 1981 to 2012.

Reacting to a news report in an English daily on August 10, a spokesman of the Town and Country Planning Department, Haryana, said the allegations were “wrong” and “misleading”.