In its first draft report on land deals in Haryana under the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government, the auditor has said that Vadra's Skylight Hospitality Private Limited was allowed to develop a commercial colony when it had just Rs 1 lakh in its kitty. "The department (of town and country planning) ignored the aspect of the financial capacity of the colonizer," said the report.
The land was soon sold to DLF Universal for Rs 58 crore, with Skylight Hospitality making a neat profit of Rs 43.66 crore.
The CAG draft report underlines that the bilateral agreement between the state government and Skylight Hospitality required Vadra's company to retain only Rs 2.15 crore, and pass on the rest to the government account. Since Vadra's company had altogether spent Rs 14.3 crore — Rs 7.5 crore towards land purchase and another Rs 6.84 crore on security and licence fees and conversion charges — the draft report says the Hooda government should have realized Rs 41.5 crore from Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law.
"As per bilateral agreement referred ibid, the developer was required to retain a profit of Rs 2.15 crore after developing the project but in the instant case the firm earned a profit of Rs 43.66 crore by selling this licence to DLF but had not deposited the profit i.e. Rs 41.51 crore in the government account," the draft report mentions.
The draft report was sent to Haryana government on September 22 when Hooda, who maintained that no favour was extended to Vadra, was still in office. With the regime change, it is the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government which has to respond to the audit findings.
The BJP highlighted Vadra's controversial land deals during the campaign for both Lok Sabha and Haryana elections, with Prime Minister Modi himself leading the charge by raising how the Hooda government reversed the decision of IAS officer Ashok Khemka not to regularize the land purchase by Priyanka Gandhi's spouse.
Khemka, who accused the Hooda government of harassing him for objecting to Vadra's controversial transactions, also questioned the source of Rs 7.5 crore with which he purchased 3.5 acres of land, suggesting that it was not his own money.
The CAG findings tie in with assertions made by Khemka who was removed as director general (land holdings and land records) and inspector general (registration) after he raised objections to the manner in which Vadra acquired the land and later sold it off to DLF Universal at a huge profit.
The report on Vadra is part of a larger exercise CAG has undertaken to scrutinize land deals under Hooda — an issue which the BJP successfully used against Congress in the state polls, showcasing his alleged favours to Vadra, emblematic of the pattern where state government allowed the conversion of land use to benefit chosen developers.
The audit, which started as a thematic audit in June 2013 focusing on a few cases, has now been expanded to a full performance audit like the 2G spectrum allocation and the one done on the Commonwealth Games as per the instructions of the headquarters.
In the last week of December, 2013, CAG Shashi Kant Sharma is believed to have asked the state principal auditor general to carry out a detailed performance audit that covers all developers who were granted licences by the Hooda government.
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