Transferred Again!

Transferred out again. So screamed the headlines.

Ashok Khemka, the whistle-blower IAS officer who had famously taken on Robert Vadra and Bhupinder Singh Hooda in shady land deals in Haryana, and paid for it, has got the same treatment yet again, this time from BJP government in Haryana.

Between 2012 and 2014, he was described as the Congress party’s biggest political challenger in Haryana. He was the Director General of Land consolidation and Land Records-cum-Inspector General of Registration.  In 2015, he was the Transport Commissioner responsible for giving fitness certificates to trucks and heavy vehicles. He had earlier tweeted stating -

60% of road accidents due to overloaded and oversized transport vehicles. Industry cooperation needed to stop this road menace.

- Ashok Khemka Tweet

‘Hurt’ but not Down

His bullish attitude resulted in a truckers strike as he refused to give fitness certificates to several trucks that were either well past their ‘expiry’ dates or were simply always running overloaded.

Again, he has been transferred to a much less significant Department of Archaeology. Joke now on social media is that as Director of Archaeology, he can now dig out more scams against those who have been targeting him.

I did speak to Khemka on phone and while he was not willing to come on record, I could easily sense a great sense of hurt in his voice. After all when he was taking on the son-in-law of India’s ‘first family’, it was the BJP which came out, guns blazing, in his support.

Now it’s the very same BJP, which seems to have trained its guns on him. Excuses offered by the present Haryana CM are eerily similar to the ones offered by his predecessor, Hooda.

“These are routine transfers,” said Manohar Lal Khattar, an old RSS hand, and an even older associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Khemka’s transfer record now reads like this: 45 transfers in 24 years!

When Modi took over, rumors were rife that Khemka would join the PMO.  After all, from Nitin Gadkari to Arun Jaitley to Amit Shah - the BJP had made the most of his investigation into land deals of Rober Vadra in the run-up to 2014 Haryana elections. An investigation now accepted by the Haryana CAG as well.

Four Questions

So, this gives rise to four questions.

- Will Modi intervene and speak to his old friend ML Khattar, asking why Khemka needs to be in the Department of Archaeology, and not in the Transport Department?

- If the CAG has now come out with a report essentially agreeing with the investigation done by Khemka in Robert Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality land deal, will there be some concrete action against Vadra?

- Are we to understand that the same lobbies which were at work during the Hooda regime in Haryana are still as powerful?

- Is Mr Khemka the eternal trouble maker for politicians in Haryana because of his no nonsense approach?