Asked to comment on issue of land deals of Vadra surfacing in in Haryana and Rajasthan, Congress spokesperson Renuka Chaudhary said the matter falls within the jurisdiction of state governments.
Even as the Congress on Tuesday washed hands off the controversial land deals of Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, saying it concerns the law-enforcing agencies, the issue derailed parliament on Tuesday with both the houses adjourned without transacting any business. Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal made futile attempt twice in the Lok Sabha to reply to the debate for passage of the Railway Budget.
Asked to comment on issue of land deals of Vadra surfacing in in Haryana and Rajasthan, Congress spokesperson Renuka Chaudhary said the matter falls within the jurisdiction of state governments. The party also rejected opposition demand to discuss the issue in the parliament, saying Vadra was not a politician. "State government and law enforcement agencies concerned will look into it. He (Vadra) is not a politician... He is an individual. Why will Parliament will debate this? How does it qualify to come in Parliament?
Congress president Sonia Gandhi was in the Lok Sabha when the BJP members disrupted the house with placards taunting the finance minister to learn from the "son-in-law" how to earn profits sitting at home to reduce budget deficit. The Congress members too joined in the ruckus to take on the BJP while issues of the plight of ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Italian marines, arrested for killing Indian fishermen, not returning to stand trial also added to pandemonium.
The BJP later demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into the "land scam" of Vadra first in Haryana and then in Rajasthan in a direct collusion with the Congress governments in the two states. "First 2G, then CWG and now Rahul Gandhi's "Jijaji" (brother-in-law). This is P4 -- Public policy for private profit" remarked BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar at a Press conference here, flanked by Rajasthan MPs Arjun Ram Meghwal and V P Singh giving details anomalies in the land scam of Vadra in Bikaner district of the state where price of the lands bought by him shot up 500 to 600 times because of the Jahwaharlal Nehru Solar Mission launched in the district to produce solar energy.
The two MPs pointed out that the speed with which mutation and registration of the properties were done and the government even exempted them from the land ceiling law smacks of political corruption. Bikaner MP Meghwal narrated how Vadra engaged one Mahesh Naagar, brother of a Haryana Congress leader Lalit Nagar, to go on buying properties in his desert district in the name of 12 companies as he was privy to the government decision to set up the solar power stations there. Vadra bought money for trading the lands at high premium and the state government even helped him in expediting every deal.
The Centre was to invest in the solar energy while the state government was to provide land for the mission free or at a nominal 10 per cent price, but it wriggled out to force the companies buy land at very high price from Vadra, Meghwal pointed out. Rajya Sabha MP VP Singh said a probe alone will reveal how Vadra's companies with equity of Rs5-10 lakhs could buy land worth crores and who gave him money for the purpose if he says he took loan. Also need to be probed is how the land ceiling act was circumvented, he said.
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