Chautalas neck-deep in trouble
Proximity of elections triggers political stirrings. With 2014 Lok Sabha and Haryana Assembly elections barely 13 and 18 months away, Haryana politics has started showing signs of turmoil. A closer look at the state of the mainstream political parties indicates that they have been hit by the phenomenon.
Take the main opposition party Indian National Lok Dal. It finds itself in a crisis following the 10-year imprisonment awarded to the party supremo Om Parkash Chautala and his elder son Ajay Chautala by the CBI court in the JBT teachers’ recruitment scam. Chautala’s younger son Abhey Chautala, who is holding the fort in the absence of his jailed father and elder brother, has alleged that the case was the result of a Congress-CBI conspiracy.
No doubt, the CBI has often been used by successive central leaderships, especially by the Congress-led governments, against their political adversaries. The anti-Congress campaign spearheaded by Chautala’s younger son Abhey Singh against what he describes as the “CBI-Congress conspiracy” against the INLD’s top leadership needs to be seen in this context. The campaign evoked sympathy for the jailed Chautalas as indicated by the large crowds that thronged the party’s protest rallies against the alleged “CBI-Congress conspiracy”.
The question is: Does the “CBI-Congress conspiracy” charge in the indictment of Chautalas in recruitment scam hold good? If the conspiracy theory is accepted, it would imply that the court which sent Chautalas and others to jail was also a part of the so-called ‘conspiracy’? Will the proponents of the charge dare say so publicly?
Verdicts of the courts are based on the evidence placed before them. If defendants fail to falsify the validity of the evidence, they naturally invite adverse verdicts from trial courts. In the teachers’ recruitment scam case, the judge commented that the CBI probe was launched three years after the scam, which could result in “limitations.” He said “However, I would say the investigation was fair and there is nothing on record that it (CBI) was biased… for any reasons including the political ones”.
Reacting to the jailing of his father and brother, Abhey Chautala said, “If giving jobs is a crime, we will do it again and again”. It is every government’s duty to provide jobs to the unemployed. But if the jobs are given by fraudulently prepared second set of interview scores, as was done in JBT teachers recruitment, then the ‘givers’ of jobs should be ready to face indictment by the courts.
The recruitment scam is not the end of Chautalas’ troubles. They are facing two other, evidently more serious, cases. One concerning amassing of disproportionate assets, in which Abhey Chautala is also an accused, is at an advanced trial stage. The other is about the “dubious selections” in the Haryana Civil Services in which Om Parkash Chautala has also been named. The CBI has recommended registration of the case against Chautala and several former officers. It is pending in the Supreme Court.
An adverse outcome of these cases would raise a question mark on the future of INLD. It would affect its capability to continue as a formidable challenger to the Congress hegemony. The party would also suffer further setback if the perceived uncertainty over its future continued till 2014 elections.
The ruling Congress finds itself in a different kind of bind. Besides the anti-incumbency factor, the caste arithmetic plays a major role in deciding outcome of Indian elections. In Haryana’s caste-dominated politics, the main issue for the Congress will be how to retain its support base among Jats and non-Jats. If the sympathy the INLD witnessed immediately after the Chautalas imprisonment sustains till the 2014 elections, the ruling party’s Jat support base will get eroded.
To what extent the Congress is able to protect its non-Jat vote bank from getting dented will depend on the longevity of Kuldeep Bishnoi’s Haryana Janhit Congress-BJP alliance and also on their ability to avoid clash of interests as only non-Jats constitute their support base.
The enthusiasm witnessed in the two parties at the time of formation of the alliance is already showing signs of receding. They had decided that the BJP and HJC would contest eight and two Lok Sabha seats respectively while they would put up equal number of candidates for the 90 Assembly seats. The time schedule fixed for specifying the seats has long expired but they have failed to specify the seats each would contest.
The other problem the Congress is confronted with is fresh eruption of factionalism. Chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s detractors have launched a fresh onslaught against him accusing him of regional bias in terms of development and in giving jobs. Spearheading the attacks are the Union Minister Kumari Selja and party MP Rao Inderjit Singh. Their main grouse is that their constituencies have remained neglected while huge amounts have been spent in the chief minister’s “favoured areas”.
That Haryana has witnessed fast development during the nine years of the Hooda-led government, is not contested by its critics. Hooda recently declared that modern Haryana’s architect Bansi Lal was his role model for the state’s development and that he had picked up the process from where Bansi Lal had left it. He has countered his detractors’ charge of biased development and released in the state Assembly figures of money spent on development in various regions.
Proximity of elections makes it imperative for rulers to introspect about their overall performance both in the political and governance arenas. In the backdrop of the political trends in Haryana narrated above the state’s ruling leadership also needs to introspect and take corrective steps if it wants to prevent repetition of what happened in the 2009 mid-term poll. (IPA Service)