Chautala, son held guilty in teachers job scam (Episode 252 - 253 on 31 May and 01st Jun 2013)

Part 1


Part 2

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The Inside Story

Haryana Teachers Recruitment Scam

On Wednesday, a special CBI court in Chandigarh convicted former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, his son Ajay Chautala, and 53 others for illegally selecting over 3,000 junior basic trained teachers by replacing the original selection list compiled from 18 districts with fake ones. The recruitment was initiated in 1999 to solve the acute shortage of teachers in Haryana. The accused persons, including 16 women, were arrested and sent to Tihar Central Jail to await the order on quantum of sentence which would be pronounced on January 22.

The scam came to light when Sanjiv Kumar, the Director of Primary Education when the award lists were swapped, approached the Supreme Court in 2003 with a writ petition alleging that he was pressured by Mr. O.P. Chautala to replace the original lists with fake ones. However, Mr. Kumar’s claim to be a whistleblower was exposed by the CBI, which found that he was also complicit in the conspiracy to swap the award lists.

Terming Mr. O.P. Chautala as the “main conspirator,” Special CBI Judge Vinod Kumar convicted all the accused persons of criminal conspiracy, criminal misconduct by public servant, abuse of official position, forgery, and cheating with knowledge that wrongful loss may ensue to person whose interest the offenders were bound to protect. Though the lawyers of the former Haryana Chief Minister, O.P. Chautala, claimed that he was unaware of the scheme and that the CBI investigation was motivated by the Congress party, the Special Judge noted that “profuse evidence was available on record to show that Mr. Chautala was managing the whole affair.”

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