Subhash Mishra By

The ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh is apparently not daring enough to act on an Economic Offences Wing (EOW) report indicting O P Vadra, uncle of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, for ‘selling out a hospital’ to a private institution, in blatant violation of stipulated norms. O P Vadra established the Moradabad Charitable Trust and Research Centre in his home district of Moradabad in 2010, using funds collected from MPs, MLCs and the public through his influence in socio-political circles of the State.

As chairman of the trust, Vadra also reportedly got a five-acre plot allotted for setting up a hospital and a nursing home. The trust then established the Vivekanand Hospital, again using public funds.

Besides government assistance, funds for the trust poured in from people’s representatives, including the-then MP B.P Singhal, the then MLC Ram Shankar Kaushik, and other donors, the report said.

On November 26, 2010, O P Vadra, as chairman of the trust, handed over the trust and the hospital to Fortis India through a ‘clandestine’ agreement entered between himself and the hospital group’s management. Other members of the trust like Raghav Gupta, Ajay Gupta and Ved Prakash Manchanda were reportedly all against the move. Based on a complaint by some trustees from the BSP regime, the government had ordered the EOW wing of the police to submit a report.

In 2012, the Meerut wing of the EOW handed over a detailed report to its higher-ups, implicating O P Vadra and 15 others as well as the management of Fortis Hospitals for grossly violating norms during the hand-over of the hospital.

In February this year, the EOW dispatched the report to the State’s Home department, seeking permission for registration of criminal cases against O P Vadra and others. For very obvious reasons, the ruling SP, which supports the Congress-led UPA at the centre, has not mustered enough courage to give a green signal to the EOW for further legal action. An official of the Home department told Express that the report is being reviewed and a final call on the registration of cases would be taken soon.