Om Prakash Chautala and his Son held guilty in Teachers Recruitment Scam

The Special CBI Court on 16 January 2013 convicted former Chief Minister of Haryana and President of Indian National Lok Dal Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay Chautala along with 53 others for illegal selection of 3000 junior basic trained teachers. The accused managed to replace the original selection list that was compiled from the 18 districts, with the fake list.

The process of recruitment started in 1999 to deal with the issue of acute shortage of teachers in the state. 3206 vacancies were advertised for recruitment of the junior basic trained teachers from 18 districts of Haryana. All the accused of the case were arrested and sent to Tihar Central Jail and the orders on the quantum of sentence is awaited to be pronounced on 22 January 2013. The arrested includes 16 women.

The Special CBI Judge termed Om Prakash Chautala to be the main conspirator and convicted the others involved in the case of charges related to criminal misconduct of a public servant, criminal conspiracy, forgery, abuse of official position, cheating with a knowledge that the illegal loss that would result to person whose interest all the convicted were supposed to protect.

How the Scam Surfaced

The scam surfaced after the Director of Primary Education (DPE), Sanjiv Kumar in the year 2003 approached the Supreme Court and submitted a writ petition and claimed that Om Prakash Chautala created a pressure to replace the original lists with the fake ones.