NEW DELHI: Just days ahead of the Haryana assembly polls, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the convicted chief of Sirsa's Dera Sacha Sauda, walked out of jail in Rohtak on Wednesday after he was granted a 20-day parole. His parole application came within a month of returning from a 21-day furlough granted to him on August 13.

Ram Rahim was convicted and sentenced in 2017 to 20 years in prison for raping two of his disciples. He is lodged in Sunaria jail in Haryana's Rohtak district and has been granted parole as many as 15 times, spending over 259 days out of jail in the past seven years.

The Haryana government granted him parole after getting approval from the Election Commission (EC), and it is no coincidence that the paroles granted to him have always coincided with various polls, including Lok Sabha, assembly, or panchayat elections.

This time, he received parole just a few days before the assembly elections. With lakhs of followers across the state, Ram Rahim has the potential and political clout to influence the outcome of the elections to some extent, especially in the Fatehabad district. The three constituencies of Tohana, Ratia, and Fatehabad have a high concentration of his ardent followers, mostly from the Dalit community, who can be easily influenced by his diktats.

This is the third time this year that Ram Rahim has been granted furlough. Apart from the 21-day furlough in August, he was given a 50-day parole on January 19, just months before the Lok Sabha elections, which were held in India from April 19 to June 1, 2024, in seven phases.

While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the current state government, has maintained that Ram Rahim's release was per the state's jail manual provisions, the Congress has complained to the EC that this has been done to influence voters.

On Tuesday, Robert Vadra, the husband of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, accused the BJP of backing the release of Ram Rahim and along with Arvind Kejriwal, the head of the Aam Aadmi Party, to influence the Haryana state assembly elections.