File photo of Robert Vadra
Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra's land deals in Rajasthan have come under scrutiny just days after the party was unseated in the state by the BJP in this month's assembly polls.
A group of BJP MPs have written to the newly-formed Vasundhara Raje government asking for a commission of inquiry to look into land bought by Mr Vadra's companies in the state. They claim that these deals violate the Land Ceiling Act.
In one of the deals in 2009, Mr Vadra had reportedly bought land in Bikaner that was in the middle of the Thar desert and largely wasteland. He reportedly bought over 270 hectares of land in different segments for nearly Rs 2.83 crore.
The land was reportedly bought on Mr Vadra's behalf by Mahesh Nagar, a former Congress MLA from Faridabad in Haryana, the state where Mr Vadra's land deals have been at the centre of controversy for some time.
The Bikaner land is now worth much more as it is being developed as a solar energy hub. The value of the land reportedly multiplied after the previous Congress regime of Ashok Gehlot signed a deal with a private group to set up a silicon plant in the area.
The BJP alleges that Mr Vadra's companies sold land to companies interested in setting up solar energy projects.
The Gehlot government has claimed that the land deals were all above board, but the group of BJP MPs - Ravishankar Prasad, JP Nadda, Bhupendra Yadav, Rajendra Agrawal and Arjun Meghwal - have asked their government for an investigation into whether land laws were violated and farmers were short-changed in lucrative deals.