CHANDIGARH: Immediately after his final release from Tihar jail, former Haryana chief minister O P Chautala on Friday announced that he would first visit the farmers protesting at Delhi’s border - Singhu, Ghazipur, Shahjahanpur and Tikri sites - against the Centre’s agriculture bills before formally kicking off his public campaign in Haryana.
“I will first go to farmers to congratulate them for their struggle and to extend my support to their movement. Thereafter, I will visit each and every village of Haryana,” said Chautala Senior during his interaction with party workers and leaders who had gathered at his Gurgaon residence on Friday.
The former CM was formally released from Tihar jail on Friday after completing all the documentation.
Cong leaders falsely implicated my father: Abhay
Sharing his plans, Chautala, who recently fractured his hand, said that immediately after removal of his plaster, he would meet farmers and afterward would visit the entire state in a customised vehicle. He said he will try to meet each and every person in the state and will stay and sleep in the vehicle till he covers the entire state. Chautala Senior, who had been living in restrictive conditions on account of being a convict during his parole and temporary release from jails since January 2013, appeared confident and ecstatic after the completion of his jail term.
His younger son and INLD leader Abhay Chautala accused the Congress of falsely implicating his father in the JBT teachers’ recruitment scam.
He categorically claimed the involvement of Randeep Singh Surjewala, Karan Singh Dalal and Bhupinder Singh Hooda in the conspiracy, He claimed the three Congress leaders connived with former Haryana bureaucrat Sanjeev Kumar, who is also a convict in the recruitment scam, to implicate O P Chautala. Interacting to media persons in Chandigarh on Friday, the former Ellenabad MLA Abhay Singh said the Congress is responsible for sending his father behind the bars and Delhi's Aam Adami Party (AAP) tried to ensure that Chautala Senior does not leave jail. Claiming that his father would have come out of jail around two-and-a-half years ago, Abhay said AAP had obstructed his release.
He claimed that Congress MLA Karan Singh Dalal instigated former IAS officer Sanjeev Kumar to accuse OP Chautala in the recruitment scam. According to Abhay, Sanjeev Kumar, who claimed to be a whistle-blower in this case, was suspended from the post of director of the education department by the then O P Chautala government over irregularities in the purchase of desks for students.
Abhay said the names of O P Chautala, his brother Ajay Chautala and their party leader Sher Singh Badshami were not mentioned in the CBI charge sheet and said senior IAS Rajni Shekhri Sibbal, who was one of the key CBI witnesses against the Chautalas, had not named his father in her statement recorded by CBI under Section 161 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
“However, a supplementary charge sheet was submitted against them after Bhupinder Singh Hooda met the CBI director twice. It was only after Hooda's meeting with the then CBI director, names of O P Chautala and other leaders were added as accused under Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy),” claimed Abhay, who appeared ecstatic over the release of his father from jail.
Abhay accuses brother’s family
Accusing his estranged brother Ajay Chautala and nephews, deputy CM Dushyant Chautala and Digvijay Chautala, the INLD leader said during the Jind bypoll Dushyant's JJP had contested the election with AAP and that is why they had cancelled his father’s furlough and because of their insistence, the AAP government in Delhi had sent Chautala Senior from hospital to jail. Abhay claimed that even after the recent accident in which OP Chautala was injured, nobody from his brother's family met him to inquire about his well being.
