Former Haryana CM Om Prakash Chautala Appears For Class 10 Exam At 86, Prepared For It In Jail

Om Prakash Chautala said he had thoroughly prepared for his Class 10 English exam and would pass with cent per cent marks.

File Photo: Getty Images

New Delhi: Former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala on Wednesday appeared for his Class 10 English examination at the age of 86.

The veteran politician had appeared for his Class 12 examinations under the Haryana Open Board earlier this year.

The 86-year-old wrote the English exam on Wednesday at Arya Girls Senior Secondary School on Arya Samaj Road in Sirsa.

He said he had thoroughly prepared for the exam and would pass with cent per cent marks.

"I had appeared in the Class 10 examination two years ago while I was in the Tihar Jail. However, I did not appear in the English paper. The education board gave me a compartment in the subject, so I wrote the paper now," Chautala said after appearing in the exam, PTI reported.

The former chief minister said even though he could not get much education when he was young, he used to attentively listen to English words and then tried to write them.

"That is how I got hold of the subject," he said.

Om Prakash Chautala's exam result was not released on August 5 because he was yet to clear the Class 10 English exam. So to be able to get his Class 12 result, the former Haryana Chief Minister sat for the exam.

Chautala had previously requested to be assigned a writer from the education department to be able to give the examination and the request was accepted.

A class 10 student of the Sirsa school, Malkiat Kaur, helped him in this task. "He was well prepared, his pronunciation was very good and his marks are expected to be good in this subject," PTI quoted her as saying.

He reportedly finished his exam in two hours and left the centre.

Om Prakash Chautala had passed his Class 10 exam from the National Institute of Open School in 2017 at the age of 82. According to inputs, he secured 53.4 per cent marks in Urdu, Science, Social Studies and Indian Culture and Heritage.

A court in Rohini had convicted Chautala in the junior basic teachers' recruitment case in Haryana and he was sentenced to serve 10 years of imprisonment. The INLD leader was lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail from January 2013 to July this year.

"During my prison term, I decided to work on my educational qualification," Chautala said.