Robert Vadra land deal: Petitioner seeks adjournment till after polls

by Subhajit Sengupta Robert Vadra can breathe easy, but only just. The petitioner who filed the public interest litigation seeking a CBI probe into his various land deals in Haryana and Rajasthan has requested the court to adjourn the proceedings till the elections are over. ML Sharma told the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court that any move by the court right now would benefit either the Congress or the BJP. The matter will now come up for hearing on 13th May, a day after the voting for the general elections 2014 gets over. [caption id=“attachment_1502927” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Vadra can rest easy for now: PTI[/caption] The petitioner’s change of heart can at best be termed ironic, given that the PIL was filed for hearing last week, which was again bang in the middle of the election season. When asked as to what prompted this sudden attack of the conscience, ML Sharma told Firstpost that in the last one week “both the Congress and the BJP blamed me for taking money from the other party. A notice to Vadra on this matter would have benefited the BJP while if it were to be dismissed then Congress would have used it to its benefit.” Sharma had filed a similar PIL in Supreme Court in October last which the apex court had then refused to entertain. The bench had then questioned his motive, for “targeting” Vadra and said it would not allow anybody “to destroy someone’s name.” But that did not stop him. He moved the court again, this time citing the lack of action by agencies like the CBI in probing the Vadra deals. The petitioner is seeking a probe by the CBI under charges of cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and prevention of corruption act. He claims that this is a scam worth Rs 20,000 crore. But Vadra isn’t the only one in Sharma’s firing line.  The PIL cites media reports to claim that the current CAG Shashi Kant Sharma issued a letter to stop a CAG Audit/enquiry into the Skylight Pvt ltd within a fortnight of succeeding Vinod Rai as the chief auditor of the country. Skylight is a company based out of Sukhdev Vihar. It is allegedly owned by Robert Vadra and his mother Maureen Vadra. Interestingly, Sharma had also filled a PIL, seeking the cancellation of Sharma’s appointment as the Comptroller and Auditor General. After AAP brought the Vadra matter from the realm of Chinese whispers to front page news, he has been under a lot of heat. And as the battle moves from Modi vs Rahul to Modi vs Priyanka, the BJP has been rather aggressive in pursuing the alleged financial irregularities of Robert Vadra. Though the BJP’s #damadgate videos didn’t capture the popular imagination as much as his voting day pink pants did, this has a definite Zardari-isque impact on the Gandhi family - remember Mr 10 percent during Benazir rule? A charge which was never quiet convincingly proven but has become a part of the urban legend. Similarly though the rule of law has been giving clean chits to Vadra, his land deals in Rajasthan and Haryana remain tainted in the popular perception.