Did not go to court when faced with your wrath

CHANDIGARH: A day after the Punjab and Haryana high court summoned complete records on the Dhingra Commission, following a petition by former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda challenging the panel's constitutional validity, whistle blower IAS officer Ashok Khemka on Thursday tweeted that he "did not go to court when faced with your wrath for exposing license blackmarketing & land scams".

The 1991 batch IAS officer did not mention Hooda's name in the tweet but it was clear who the target of his sarcastic remark was. Khemka had not only faced a chargesheet in connection with cancelling the mutation of land deal between UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra's company and real estate giant DLF but the state Congress government had even launched many inquiries against him in connection with different matters.

"Duty & truth conquered my fear and greed," tweeted Khemka on Thursday. In October 2012, he had cancelled the mutation of the controversial land deal on the ground that the assistant consolidation officer, who had sanctioned the change of title in the revenue record in favour of DLF, was not competent to do so.

However, the then Congress government had chargesheeted Khemka accusing him of "administrative misconduct for overstepping jurisdiction" in passing orders to cancel the mutation of 3.5 acre land in Gurgaon's Shikohpur village. However, the officer had alleged that he was victimized for exposing murky land deals.

In 2015, Haryana's BJP government had set up Justice S N Dhingra commission to probe the grant of commercial licences to private companies, including Vadra's Skylight Hospitality. Hooda had challenged the panel's constitutional validity, adding that the orders to set it up were taken by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on May 13, 2015 at his own instance.

He said the orders were "prompted solely by malice, and to pursue his party's political vendetta, with a clear intention of portraying him (Hooda) in bad light". Hooda had filed a petition before the HC on Tuesday challenging the report of one-man Justice S N Dhingra commission that had probed controversial land deals in Gurgaon, including those of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.