Chandigarh: “Tried hard to address corruption and bring reforms in transport despite severe limitations and entrenched interests. Moment is truly painful.” This tweet by whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka has now hit headlines of television channels.
Khemka became a known figure after he pointed out alleged irregularities of land dealings of Robert Vadra. However the now the news is he was transferred by the Haryana government. He has now been transferred and given dual charge of secretary and director general, archaeology and museums.
Khemka, a computer engineer who got his first posting as IAS officer in 1993, was stated to have been transferred 45 times in 22 years with most of his postings lasting merely months.
Khemka had last Thursday said his action of cancelling a multi-million-rupee land deal between Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, with realty giant DLF has been “vindicated” by a CAG report.
“My action in VADRA-DLF land-license deal vindicated in CAG report, but continue to suffer the stigma of chargesheet,” he had tweeted. At the same time, he said: “Many issues untouched in the CAG report. Cycle of corruption involved the triad – business, politics and bureaucracy.”
Haryana’s BJP government on Wednesday transferred whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka to a low profile post just four months after appointing him as state transport commissioner. Only last week, while welcoming the CAG report on the land deals involving Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, Khemka had expressed his unhappiness by tweeting that he continued to face the “stigma of chargesheet”.
In the transport department, Khemka had denied fitness certificates to over-sized trucks and trailers for carrying automobiles, leading to truckers’ strike in January. Two days after 60,000 trucks and trailers went off the roads, the state government gave them one year’s time to follow the rules for vehicle fitness and the transporters called off the strike. Sources say Khemka’s tough stand for implementation of rules may have irritated the transporters’ lobby.
The Hooda government also gave him low profile assignments after he cancelled the mutation of land deal between Vadra and real estate giant DLF in 2012. Then, he was initially sent to the Haryana Seed Development Corporation but was further transferred to the archives department after he exposed irregularities in the corporation.
During the Lok Sabha polls and assembly polls in 2014, the BJP prominently raised the issue of Vadra land deals and alleged victimization of honest officers during the Congress regime.
Less than two months after the Narendra Modi government took over, the Civil Services Board in July 2014 approved his request for a central deputation. Earlier, his name was not included in the Centre’s offer list because of a chargesheet issued by the then Hooda government against him in connection with the Vadra-DLF land deal.
Khemka was not sent to the Centre on central deputation but the Khattar government in Haryana in November 2014 had brought Khemka into the mainstream of bureaucracy by handing over the responsibility of transport department.
