Dhingra commission: Naidu rejects involvement of PMO

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said it is baseless to claim that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Haryana Chief Minister's Office (CMO) are involved in the Justice SN Dhingra panel report into alleged land scams in Haryana.

'It is a judicial matter neither the PMO nor the CMO is involved in this,' Naidu told the media here. Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has said the court will take cognizance of the matter.

'The court will take cognizance of this. There is no leak, if at all such a thing comes up it will be a matter of probe,' he told the media.

Earlier, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda of the Congress claimed before the Punjab and Haryana high court, that either the state BJP government or some of its officers have leaked the Dhingra panel report into alleged land scams in Haryana.

The Justice Dhingra Commission concluded that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra made illegal profits of Rs 50.5 crore from a land deal in Haryana in 2008 without spending a single penny.

The commission was constituted in 2015 to investigate a mutation of land deal between Vadra's firm Skylight Hospitality and realty major DLF. The Dhingra Commission had submitted its 182-page report to Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in Chandigarh on 31 August 2016.

The Dhingra panel submitted its report on August 31 last year. The state government gave an undertaking in November 2016 not to release the report without the court's permission. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court too had sought a copy of the report in a sealed cover in a land acquisition case.

Hooda had filed a petition in November last year challenging the very constitution of the Dhingra panel, alleging that the government action of ordering the probe was 'mala fide' and a result of political 'vendetta'. However, the High Court is yet to issue a formal notice to the state government.

-ANI