Reacting to the news item headlined “Swamy hands over records on Vadra link in land deal”, published on April 15, Sanjey Roy, Senior Vice-President-Corporate Communications, DLF Ltd., New Delhi, writes:
The charges in the story, based on allegations levelled by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy against DLF in a letter he sent to the President of India, are incorrect, hypothetical and groundless. DLF’s views on the matter were not sought prior to publishing it.
Amit Mehta was never a DLF Group employee but served as a nominee director on behalf of the Skylight Group on the board of Saket Hotel Joint Venture companies. Disclosures regarding this relationship have been made in all records.
The DLF Group has no knowledge or association with the five companies mentioned, or Amit Mehta’s role in the companies. We refute allegations that seek to connect them to the DLF Group. DLF has written to the Registrar of Companies to rectify the records, which may have been inadvertently attached in a generic DLF email id erroneously with Amit Mehta’s name. As per unique DIN in Form DIN-I of Mr. Mehta, his e-mail id is amitartex@gmail.com.
The allegation that Mr. Vadra used his political influence to get a 23-acre property near Rashtrapati Bhavan allotted to DLF for a consideration of Rs.65 crore is a figment of the imagination. The land has been in the private ownership of Keventers for more than three quarters of a century, and no question of any allotment of this land by any government agency arises. The land use was first notified for Residential purposes in 1962 in the Master Plan of Delhi. Since then it has remained as residential land in all subsequent Master Plans. Keventers became a part of the DLF Group in 2004, and permissions for change of land use had been obtained well before that. Subsequently, further permissions and approvals were obtained through High Court orders, and not by means of any undue favours from anybody. The amount of Rs.65 crore mentioned in the story is only a small portion of the fees and charges the company has paid to the government in accordance with notified rates and charges. This issue has been raised in the public domain and in the media earlier and has been sufficiently clarified.
There is no link between the two issues; any attempt to draw incorrect inferences is ill-conceived and baseless.
DLF follows the highest standards of corporate governance and acts strictly in compliance with laws, rules and regulations.
