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STATES: HARYANA
Opposition Cries Foulplay
Even one-time inld
MLAs like Charan Dass Shorewala and Vinod Kumar Marya who had deserted
Chautala to join the HVP haven't escaped criminal and corruption cases
and have had a stint in jail since the INLD Government assumed power.
Interestingly, several of the 18 former HVP legislators who had dumped
the Bansi Lal government in July 1999 and joined the Chautala bandwagon
in a familiar display of Haryana's aya ram gaya ram politics are now facing
the legal music after they were left high and dry by the INLD supremo
who denied them assembly tickets, an allurement they had been offered
to desert and topple Bansi Lal.
Few may criticise Chautala's action against
the corrupt, but the alacrity with which the state police and the Vigilance
Bureau are investigating the complaints and booking political rivals has
only added grist to the opposition outcry. In several cases, complaints
were ostensibly orchestrated, while in some others the police used family
feuds as a ploy to implicate political figures. Dalal, a staunch opponent
of Chautala, who is fighting a string of cases in four firs registered
in quick succession in the past year, has been named by the police as
a conspirator in an alleged murder of an old woman in his family. No sooner
had Dalal got bail in this case recently than he was charged by the Vigilance
Bureau in an alleged fertiliser purchase scandal relating to his tenure
as minister in the Bansi Lal government.
Chautala's legal heat has been more directed
against the rival Jat politicians who pose a threat to his support base
in the peasantry. With Chautala trying to build himself as the preeminent
Kisan leader of the north, political observers discern overtones of a
no-holds-barred Jat politics in his legal offensive. "Chautala knows
that only a Jat can counter his brand of politics," says Bansi Lal.
The opposition outcry against the criminal cases
has begun to raise political temperatures in the state. The Congress,
at its "Lalkar" rally at Panipat on May 20, sounded the first
war cry. Bansi Lal too is trying to revive his rag-tag HVP's fortunes
by harping on the issue of "political vendetta". "The police
officials are behaving like an instrument of harassment to wrangle plum
posts," charges Bansi Lal.
But Chautala can draw comfort from a badly divided
Opposition. The Chahal Commission which is probing the prohibition of
the Bansi Lal regime is likely to open a Pandora's box and come handy
for Chautala to put the HVP supremo and his son and political heir Surinder
Singh in the dock. "The law will take its own course irrespective
of the status of the accused," Chautala insists. But the speed with
which the police, otherwise under fire for a deteriorating law and order
situation, are registering criminal cases against opposition leaders has
only betrayed Chautala's thinly disguised political witch-hunt. In going
overboard with his rhetorical tirade, the Jat chieftain is beginning a
fresh era of politics of revenge in Haryana which could witness a bitter
turn sooner or later.
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