New Delhi: Ashok Khemka, the senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS), who was transferred a record 57 times in his 34-year career is retiring today. The 1991-batch officer will retire as additional chief secretary of the transport department of Haryana, where he has been posted since December 2024.
Khemka, a Haryana cadre officer, shot to the limelight in 2012 when he was the first to flag alleged irregularities in the land deal between Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s husband Robert Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality and DLF Universal Ltd. Investigations in this case are still on and nobody has been arrested as yet.
Khemka, then posted as director general, consolidation of holdings, set aside the mutation of Sky Light’s 3.53 acre on October 15, 2012. However, his order to set aside the mutation was never given effect by the Gurugram revenue administration.
Born in Kolkata on April 30, 1965, Khemka is a BTech from IIT Kharagpur in 1988. He also completed a PhD in Computer Science from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and also got an MBA degree in Business Administration and Finance. While in service, he also completed his LLB from Punjab University.
“Transferred again. Same thing again. Constitution Day was celebrated yesterday. Today, the orders and rules of the Supreme Court were violated yet again. Some will be pleased. After all, I have been pushed to the final corner. Prize of honesty is humiliation,” Khemka had said in a post on X in Hindi on 26 November, 2019, after being transferred for the 53rd time.
Khemka, then principal secretary, science and technology, Haryana was shifted to the archives, archaeology and museums department in the same rank.
Known for his crusade against corruption, Khemka worked during the tenures of seven chief ministers of Haryana. They are Om Prakash Chautala, Bhajan Lal, Bansi Lal, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Manohar Lal Khattar, and Nayab Singh Saini. Despite short stints, Khemka kept highlighting alleged irregularities that came to his notice wherever he was posted, usually less significant departments, ever since he brought up the Vadra-DLF land deal in 2012.
In 2023, Khemka wrote to then Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, offering to “root out corruption” with a stint in the vigilance department. He said he had sacrificed his service career in his zeal to end corruption.
“Lopsided distribution of work does not serve public interest,” he wrote.
