Punished for taking on Vadra, says Khemka

IAS officer says he is being publicly humiliated

Within days of the Haryana government approving a second charge sheet against whistleblowing IAS officer Ashok Khemka, the beleaguered bureaucrat, in a communiqué to Haryana Chief Secretary P K Chaudhary, has alleged victimisation for exposing what he termed as an open public loot. 

He said he was being publicly humiliated, and that his biggest crime was cancelling the mutation of Robert Vadra's Sky Light Hospitality to DLF Universal last October.

In an 11-page letter to the chief secretary, he said, “My position is like the batsman in a cricket match who is asked to bat in a match where the umpire is totally biased and he knows that the umpire will raise the dreaded finger on any frivolous appeal by the fielding team.”

The 1991-batch IAS officer, who has been transferred 40 times in a career spanning 20 years, is being chargesheeted for alleged administrative misconduct for overstepping jurisdiction in passing orders to cancel the mutation of 3.5 acres of land in Gurgaon sold by Robert Vadra to DLF. 

Khemka also faces a charge sheet for alleged irregularities in the sale of wheat seed during his tenure as managing director of Haryana Seed Development Corporation from October 15 last year to this April.

Khemka wrote in his letter: “I stand condemned, unheard and held guilty even before the charge sheet is served upon me, rendering the whole disciplinary exercise a futile and one-sided formality with my guilt already prejudged.” 

He alleged that the chief minister's Principal Secretary S S Dhillon, along with senior officers, had “ganged up” against him, and that he was facing action for “failing to toe the line of the political masters”. 

Khemka said the motive behind charging him without an opportunity of hearing and announcing the action to the media was to publicly humiliate him for conscientiously doing his duty, and to instil a sense of fear in others as to what would happen if the desire of the political masters were not fulfilled. 

On Tuesday, Khemka took to Twitter to express his disappointment. He wrote: “Can Tendulkars emerge with unfair umpires or biased rules or ill-prepared grounds? Good governance facilitates citizens to emerge as masters.”