Whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who had pointed out alleged irregularities in allotment of land to Robert Vadra in Haryana, was on Wednesday transferred yet again for the umpteenth time.
A senior IAS officer, Khemka, who had in November last been posted as Transport Commissioner and Secretary by the Haryana government has been transferred and given the dual charge of Secretary and Director General, Archaeology and Museums department relieving R.S. Kharb of the charge, according an official release.
After the order, he took to microblogging site Twitter and expressed pain at the decision.
Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar has defended Khemka’s transfer, describing him as an honest officer. He stressed that officers are transferred and posted as per needs.
“He’s an honest officer. He has been transferred on administrative grounds, it’s a routine transfer,” Khattar said.
Haryana’s Health Minister Anil Vij, however, came out in Khemka’s support, saying he will talk to the Chief Minister regarding the officer “who had worked to weed out corruption during the previous Congress regime”. The outspoken BJP leader and Ambala Cantt MLA insisted that he had always stood by Khemka.
Vij, a five-time MLA and a popular BJP leader in the state, was frontrunner for the chief minister’s post when BJP won in the state elections last year. The party, however, chose Khattar, a first-time legislator from Karnal constituency and former RSS ideologue.
Khemka was among the nine IAS officers and one Haryana Civil Service (HCS) officer who were issued transfer and posting orders by the Haryana Government with immediate effect.
Khemka, a computer engineer who got his first posting as IAS officer in 1993, was stated to have been transferred around 50 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.
He also said that the report by the CAG had left many issues of corruption among businesses, politics and bureaucracy.
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