IAS officer Ashok Khemka alleges that he's being hounded for taking on Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra
The Haryana government has another serious charge against senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who has alleged that he is being persecuted for cancelling a profitable land deal struck by Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.
(Am being punished for taking on Robert Vadra, writes IAS officer Ashok Khemka)The Congress governs Haryana with Bhupinder Singh Hooda as chief minister.
The government has this month formally asked Mr Khemka to explain his action in Mr Vadra's case, accusing him of exercising powers he did not have. It has also sent him a chargesheet accusing him of dereliction of duty by failing to ensure that the state-run Haryana Seeds Development Corporation did not meet its targets during his tenure there as Managing Director.
(For IAS officer Ashok Khemka, chargesheets aplenty)Now, in the second case in the past week, the 47-year-old bureaucrat has been asked to explain his decision to promote an employee in another state-run firm, the Warehousing Corporation Limited - Panchkula, where he was the top man between 2008 and 2010.
The promotion was challenged by another government employee, who won his case in 2011. The state agriculture department, which has to pay two employees for the same post, recommended action against Mr Khemka. Two years after that, the government has now sent him a show-cause notice asking him to explain.
This is the third case that the officer is facing since he cancelled Mr Vadra's deal.
In a letter to the government, Mr Khemka this week said that he is being "publicly humiliated" for the "crime" of cancelling the 57-crore sale of land by Mr Vadra to real estate major DLF in 2008 on the grounds that it violated basic guidelines to grant windfall gain to Mr Vadra. He was transferred days after he nullified the deal last year. Since then he has been transferred twice, and is now the Director General of Archives in Chandigarh.
The Haryana government has also declared that Mr Vadra's land deal was transparent and legitimate.