Lok Sabha elections 2019| ‘Hooda defamed Jats by planning quota riots’: Manohar Lal Khattar

Addressing an election rally in Sampla township of Rohtak, Khattar maintained that no particular community had executed violence during the stir, instead it was people having political affiliations to one party who had done so.

Haryana chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday said that former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda had defamed the Jat community in the country by orchestrating a ‘well-planned riot’ during the February 2016 Jat reservation stir.

Chief minister ML Khattar with other BJP leaders during a poll meeting at Sampla town in Rohtak on Thursday.

Addressing an election rally in Sampla township of Rohtak, which is also the assembly constituency represented by Hooda, Khattar maintained that no particular community had executed violence during the stir, instead it was people having political affiliations to one party who had done so.

“You all heard the audio clip of Hooda’s aide calling up people at other places in the state and asking them to do what they have done here in Rohtak,” said Khattar. “They did all the damage with their caste politics but it was the Jat community that got defamed,” he added.

The CM’s comments come at a time when the BJP is trying hard to win the votes of the Jat community that forms the single-largest vote bank in Rohtak parliamentary constituency. The Jat community had been upset with the saffron party over its unfulfilled demand of reservation and killings of some Jat youths during the quota stir in 2016.

The CM also attacked BJP rebel MP Rajkumar Saini, who has now formed his political outfit Loktantra Suraksha Party and is contesting LS polls in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

“I strongly condemn people like Rajkumar Saini and Yashpal Malik who tried to divide the people on caste lines and destroy the social fabric in Haryana,” he said.

The CM said the opposition was rightly accusing the BJP leaders of seeking votes only in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “If we have a leader like PM Modi, why should we not seek votes in his name? The problem is that the Congress is ashamed to take its leader Rahul Gandhi’s name to ask for votes, that is why it cries foul when we do it,” said Khattar.

Lashing out at Hooda for the alleged corruption in the recruitments during his regime, Khattar said during BJP’s rule, 64,000 government jobs were given without any corruption. “If even a single person has paid bribe for job, he should come forward and it will be ensured that the money paid is fully recovered,” he said.

Speaking to HT, former chief minister and Congress’ Sonepat candidate Bhupinder Singh Hooda denied the allegations levelled by Khattar and said that if he was responsible for the riots the government should have prosecuted him. “After the Jat agitation in Panchkula, riots also happened in other places under this government. They constituted the Prakash Singh committee to probe the matter but it indicted the BJP government itself. The present dispensation is most corrupt as it sold the future of state by amending the PLPA Act which protects Aravallis. It (BJP government) is under scanner for mining scam,” he said.