The Delhi High Court on Thursday upheld a 10-year jail term for former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay Chautala in the illegal teacher recruitment case dating to 2000.Justice Siddharth Mridul said O.P. Chautala being the chief minister of Haryana at that time...cheat the youth of the state of their future, and "deserves punishment of the highest kind".The court also upheld 10 years' jail term for three others - O.P. Chautala's political advisor Sher Singh Badshami, his former OSD Vidya Dhar, and the former Haryana director of primary education Sanjeev Kumar. The court said the common thread between them is the "flagrant disregard towards the system". "Each one of them played a role in disrupting the established process to achieve their objective," Justice Mridul said in 400 pages judgement.The court also refused any leniency in punishment to O.P. Chautala for his advanced years.
It dismissed all the 55 appeals filed by the accused against the sentencing order by the trial court.Justice Mridul, however reduced the jail term of other 50 accused to two years. The court said the scam demonstrates how the process of appointing competent teachers was also vilified and not spared from the malaise of corruption."Education is a tool, which can be skilfully used by competent teachers to model the youth (our most precious human resource) in their f ormative years, to enable them to become productive citizens in future and herald India to epitome of success," it observed.
"Yet the instant case demonstrates how the process of appointing competent teachers was also vilified and not spared from the malaise of corruption. Such scams not only result in dissemination of poor quality education to the millions of children, who are bound to suffer, but also unfairly deprive the competent participants in such selection processes an opportunity to gain public employment and meaningfully serve the country. Public confidence is bound to get shaken, resulting in frustration/anxiety amongst the youth, who eagerly await the scarce employment opportunities, giving further impetus to the culture of corruption," said the court. A special Central Bureau of Investigation court here on January 22, 2013 had sentenced the Chautalas and eight others to 10 years in jail after finding them guilty of illegally recruiting 3,206 junior basic trained teachers in 2000.