CHANDIGARH: Haryana bureaucrat Ashok Khemka, whose 2012 decision to cancel a controversial Gurgaon land deal involving Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s husband Robert Vadra and realty firm DLF cemented his reputation as a stickler for rules, retired from service on Wednesday after a career marked by an astonishing 57 transfers. The 1991 batch IAS officer retired as additional chief secretary of transport department.
BJP had flagged the Vadra-DLF deal as a symbol of corruption during its 2014 Lok Sabha campaign against the then UPA govt. But Khemka didn’t quite become anyone’s blue-eyed boy. While BJP came to govt at the Centre and the state, the bureaucrat remained a rolling stone, with no consequential assignment coming his way until the fag end of his career. He was appointed additional chief secretary last Dec in a department headed by minister Anil Vij, who is known to trust him.
For some time, Khemka was posted in the science and technology department, which Vij previously headed. Most of his tenure, first under Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress govt and then BJP ministry, was spent in the archaeology and museums department.
BJP had once cited Khemka’s alleged persecution as a manifestation of Congress getting even with “a whistleblower”. But even before the party had completed a year at the Centre since winning the 2024 polls, he was back in a purportedly inconsequential role.
Khemka had vented on social media and written to the govt about “mistreatment” on several occasions. In a letter ex-Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar in 2019, he said some of his transfers at the time were “not in public interest, but based on extraneous and personal considerations”.
Referring to the DLF-Vadra land deal, which he cancelled after noticing alleged irregularities, Khemka had said: “The promise made to the nation at the time of the 2014 elections is now forgotten.”
“Governance is no longer a service; it is a business. Only a few fools like me will think and act like trustees of the public faith. Hoping against hope you will not throw this letter into the dustbin, I also request you to please accord me permission to write and seek an audience from the PM on the issue highlighted in this letter in public interest,” he wrote.
He was given a farewell by the IAS Officers Association in the presence of chief secretary Anurag Rastogi.
Khemkatold TOI he planned to start a new innings as a lawyer. “I will apply to the bar council for a licence to practice as an advocate,” he said.
