Another Chautala ready for political plunge

The buzz in political circles in Haryana is that the stage is being readied for the launch of leader of opposition Abhay Chautala’s son Karan in politics. Abhay is son of Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) supremo Om Prakash Chautala who is lodged in Tihar jail along with his eldest son Ajay in JBT teachers’ recruitment scam case. Karan shared dais with his father on the issue of stir planned by the party on Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue. A large number of party workers could be seen struggling to take a selfie or two with him.

kisan mahapanchayat in Jind on Saturday staged a walkout from the programme. The reason: His unruly supporters entered the media section and kept disturbing the newspersons from doing their work. In Rohtak, too, journalists had staged a walkout from Hooda’s press conference earlier this month after his supporters created chaos. While addressing the gathering, Hooda apologised to journalists, requesting them to come back, and left everyone in splits after he asked them in Haryanvi to not take out their anger of mismanagement in their news reports about the programme. Major Vijai Singh Mankotia (retired), a war veteran, has again opened front against chief minister Virbhadra Singh. “Mere saath ghatnayien ghatiti rehti hain .... I am always on the other side of the fence. I have got used to it,” said the former minister in response to a barrage of questions from newspersons after he was dropped from the post of vice-chairman of Himachal Tourism Development Board. The former soldier-turnedpolitician has been hopping parties in his 34-year political career. He contested elections as an Independent for the first time in 1982, then joined the Himachal Kranti Morcha, a political outfit floated by ex-CM Thakur Ram Lal that later merged with Janata Dal. In 2008, he contested the election from Dharamshala on BSP ticket, but lost. He then returned to the Congress in 2011 and contested the election as its candidate.