‘‘Kuchh saal pehle tak Lakhani ki chappal pahne bason mein dhakke khate huye bidi no. 22 ke qash lagane wala aur chavanni athani ke liye rickshaw chalkon se jhagrane wala koi aur shakhs nahin balki aaj ka mukhyamantri Om Prakash Chautala hi tha (Till a few years ago, the man wearing Lakhani chappals, travelling in buses, smoking bidi no 22 and haggling for 50 paise with poor rickshaw-pullers was none other than today’s Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala).’’The opening lines of the chargesheet presented by the Haryana Congress against Chief Minister O.P. Chautala read like a rags to-riches story of the CM. And that’s what the document finally turned out to be, as it painstakingly listed the various properties owned by Chautala and sons without nailing them on any specific charges of corruption.For proof, the party relied on affidavits submitted by Chautala’s sons Ajay and Abhay, putting their property at over Rs 13 crore, along with revenue records of their ancestral property. But what was missing was clinching evidence. Shamsher Singh Surjewala, head of the nine-member chargesheet committee, refused to even quantify the wealth.Linking the CM’s prosperity to his rise in politics, Congress claimed that Chautala had inherited only 32 acres of land at Teja Khera village in Sirsa district before 1977. But as he began his climb, the list of his properties began to swell. ‘‘The old family haveli was renovated into a plush mansion and with every passing day the family expanded its empire,’’ said Karan Singh Dalal, the main author of the chargesheet.That the Congress has high hopes of the ‘‘revelations’’ was clear from the fact that its various state leaders had come together for the event, for once—party chief Bhajan Lal shared the stage with former presidents Bhupinder singh Hooda, Birender Singh and Shamsher Singh Surjewala.Some ‘‘revelations’’ were startling, like the pictures of the CM’s empire spanning four states. Chautala, for his part, dismissed the chargesheet as baseless. THE LIST
