Govt is victimising me, says Khemka

Haryana’s whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka has accused the state government of victimising him and sitting over his performance appraisal report for the period 2012-2013, the time he acted against land scams and cancelled mutation of the land deal between Robert Vadra and DLF.

In a letter to Haryana Chief Secretary S C Choudhary, Khemka, who had in March sought a central deputation, said the Centre had not included his name in the offer list because of ‘missing Performance Appraisal Reports (PARs)’ for the years 2011-12 and 2012-13 and absence of Vigilance clearance by the state government.

“It has come to my knowledge in an application made under RTI Act that my PAR for the period – 01.04.2012 to 15.10.2012, has not been appraised,” the 1991-batch officer, currently holding the post of Secretary, Haryana Government, Department of Archives, said in the letter Friday.

“This omission seems to be deliberate to victimise me because the reporting period coincided with actions taken by me against several land scams, including a massive corruption combining land-licensing and land-releases forcing landowner-farmers to undertake distress sale of their farmlands to the builder mafia,” he alleged.

Khemka, who had hit the headlines for cancelling mutation of Vadra’s land deal with realty giant DLF in Gurgaon in October 2012, said, “Two quasi-judicial orders made on October 12 and October 15, 2012 concerned companies of a VVIP. Why should I be penalised for wilful omission of the accepting authority to perform his duties to appraise my PAR”.

“Several letters were written to your office in this regard, but all were arbitrarily dumped. I should not be victimised further,” Khema, who has faced over 40 transfers in his career, said.

The IAS officer also alleged that there is “tremendous witch-hunting and hounding after October 15, 2012 with full political patronage of the present ruling party at the state and the Centre”.

Asked about the letter, the Chief Secretary told PTI that it had been written to him only on Thursday and “(after going through it) I will have the matter looked into”.

In 2013 the state government had charge sheeted Khemka for “wrongly” cancelling mutation of the deal.