The all-powerful 'Chautala family' of Haryana has been left scrambling for alliances to remain relevant in the present-day political arena of the state. The Chautala family, which gave Haryana politics its 'tau' or uncle in the form of Chaudhary Devi Lal, now lies divided with its members fighting polls independently or from separate parties. Devi Lal, who was India's sixth Deputy Prime Minister also founded the Indian National Lok Dal in 1996.
Devi Lal was also the Chief Minister of Haryana for two terms — 1977-79 and 1987-89. He laid the foundations of the INLD in this period with the Lok Dal.
Even the INLD, which got 47 seats out of the 62 it contested in the 2000 Haryana Assembly elections, is struggling to reach even double figures. In the last assembly polls, it contested 81 seats but managed to win just 1.
Even in the Parliamentary polls, it scored zero seats in four out of the six Lok Sabha elections it has contested so far. The only remarkable performance it put up was in 1999 under Devi Lal when it secured 5 seats. In that election, it partnered with the BJP and the alliance swept the polls clean.
The party's reins then went to Devi Lal's son Om Prakash Chautala, who was also the CM of Haryana for a record four terms.
The INLD split in 2020 and the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) was born. The party was named after Devi Lal, who was popularly called 'Jan Nayak', or 'the leader of the people'. Om Prakash Chautala's younger son Ajay Chautala and grandson Dushyant founded the JJP after the duo was expelled from the INLD. However, the JJP had to forge an alliance with the BJP to stay in power.
After the 2019 elections, the Dushyant Chautala-led JJP formed an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Chautala family scion was elevated to the post of Deputy CM. His father Ajay Chautala was in jail at the time after being convicted in the Haryana teachers' recruitment scam. Ajay Chautala secured an emergency parole in 2021 and his formal release came in 2022.
However, earlier this year the JJP, withdrew support to the BJP, leading to the fall of the Manohar Lal Khattar government. Following a brief political crisis in Haryana, a floor test was conducted and the BJP's Nayab Singh Saini took over the Haryana government.
The INLD has teamed up with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party for the upcoming Haryana Assembly polls and the alliance has agreed to project Om Prakash's elder son Abhay Singh Chautala as its CM face.
The JJP's fortunes seemed to have fallen with its withdrawal from power in Haryana. In 2019, the JJP had emerged as the 'kingmaker' with its 10 MLAs. But with just three more days left for the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections, the JJP is struggling to even make a mark in Haryana politics.
Out of the 10 JJP MLAs who won the polls in 2019, only three remain with JJP. While Dushyant and his mother Naina are the 'Chautala' names, Amarjeet Dhanda is the only non-Chautala sitting MLA left in JJP. Dhanda is contesting the Julana seat in the Jind district.
JJP will find it tough in Julana as Dhanda is going up against the Congress's olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, AAP's WWE wrestler Kavita Devi, and the Haryana BJP's youth wing vice-president Captain Yogesh Bairagi.
Eight members of the Chautala family are fighting in the Haryana assembly polls this year. Interestingly, none of the members of the Chautala family or parties they are associated with have allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has been among the key allies of the INLD and the JJP at some point or the other in the electoral history of Haryana.
Abhay Singh Chautala from Ellenabad,
Aditya Chautala from Dabwali
Sunaina Chautala (Ravi Chautala's wife) from Fatehabad
Arjun Chautala from Rania
Digvijay Chautala from Dabwali
Dushyant Chautala from Uchana Kalan
Amit Sihag Chautala from Dabwali. Amit Sihag is distantly related to the Chautala family. He is the great-grandson son of Tara Chand, who was Chaudhary Devi Lal's uncle. His father is Congress leader Kamalveer Singh and his grandfather is Ganpat Ram.
Ranjit Singh Chautala from Rania. Ranjit Singh who recently quit BJP after being denied the Rania ticket is fitting as an independent but is being supported by the JJP.
Any discussion on Haryana politics cannot be complete without the origin story of the Chautala family feud. The decaying of Chaudhary Devi Lal's legacy lies in the patriarchal notion of the right to ascension to power lying with the first-born male child. Such conflict has been seen on multiple occasions in Indian familial politics — be it in Lalu Prasad Yadav's family in Bihar or Mulayam Singh Yadav's clan in Uttar Pradesh.
In the Chautala family of Haryana, the feud started when Om Prakash was handed the reins of the Lok Dal, the predecessor of the INLD, in the 1980s. This began a fight between Om Prakash Chautala and Ranjit Singh that would send ripples through generations.
Om Prakash's rise as the INLD chief did not go down well with Ranjit who saw himself as an able successor to their father Devi Lal. He felt deprived as he was born nine years after Chautala. The fight came out in the open when a bureaucrat in the Devi Lal government accused the then finance minister Sampat Singh of corruption. Om Prakash saw this as a challenge to his claim to Devi Lal's political legacy as the bureaucrat was close to Ranjit while the minister was considered a close aide of Chautala.
Sampat Singh was asked to resign by Devi Lal, which prompted Om Prakash to warn that an MLA would resign every day in protest of the decision. Split between his sons, Devi Lal resigned as the CM. However, Ranjit Singh, with the help of VP Singh, convinced him to reconsider his decision.
But in 1989, when Chautala succeeded Devi Lal as the Chief Minister of Haryana, Ranjit Singh was livid.
The same succession war has reached the fourth-generation Chautalas now as Aditya and Digvijay battle it out in Dabwali and Arjun faces Ranjit in Rania. As both INLD and JJP lie in tatters ahead of the voting for the 90-member Haryana Assembly on October 5, it all comes down to the pressing question — will Devi Lal's legacy be revived by the Chautala family? If yes, who will carry forward the "Jan Nayak's" baton in Haryana?
