Just 3 months to assembly elections, Chautala Dynasty on Political Margins in Haryana

There was a time when the regional satraps like Ch. Devilal, Ch. Bansilal, Ch. Bhajan Lal ruled Haryana negotiating with the national parties BJP and Congress according to their wishes. As the wheel of time moved, they passed their political “flambeau” to the next generations, some handled it with care while some lost the ignition on course.

Coming to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, only Ch. Devilal’s dynasty was active in the political battleground of Haryana. As the hype and hysteria settled, it became clear that both Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and JanNayak Janata Party (JJP), carrying on the legacy of Ch. Devilal failed to open their respective accounts winning none out of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana. The INLD general sec and party’s lone Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Abhay Chautala finished third in the three-cornered contest with BJP’s Naveen Jindal and Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Sushil Gupta. Abhay lagged much behind in the battle with over 78000 votes in his kitty from the “Dharam Nagri”.

While, Dushyant’s JJP which fielded candidates on all of the 10 parliamentary seats in Haryana, ended its run with registering just 0.87 percent of the vote share. Notably, to retain their security deposits, the candidates must obtain a minimum of one-sixth of the legitimate votes cast. Naina Chautala, mother of former deputy Chief Minister (CM) Dushyant Chautala and two-term MLA from Hisar, contested on JJP's symbol, but she received a mere 22,032 votes. Rao Bahadur Singh, former MLA and chairman of Yaduvanshi education group in the Ahirwal, contested from Bhiwani-Mahindragarh, received a mere 15,265 votes.  Gurgaon-based rapper Rahul Yadav Fazilpuria contested against two big giants, Rao Inderjit Singh of BJP and actor Raj Babbar of Congress, and received barely 13,278 votes in the three-cornered contest. Ramesh Khatak another candidate received just 20,080 votes in Chautalas home turf, Sirsa.

Reacting to the poll debacle, the former deputy CM of Haryana Dushyant Chautala on Wednesday said, “This time, people voted in favor of the Congress to punish the BJP. Even people from our community told us that this time they would not like to waste their vote, as it would help the BJP. The issues will be entirely different once assembly elections come, and I am sure the JJP will perform much better than its 2019 performance”. 

If we talk about JJP'S political journey, JJP was founded in December 2018, when the family feud of Chautalas reached the crescendo, after a strong demonstration by Dushyant, his younger brother Digvijay, and their supporters in the Gohana rally on September 23, 2018, which also marked the party patriarch Chaudhary Devi Lal's birth anniversary. Parting its ways from INLD, the newly founded JJP contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in coalition with AAP in Haryana but lost all of the 10 seats and failed to open its account back then also. But in 2019 just a few months after the Lok Sabha debacle, Dushyant-led JJP bounced back and won 10 assembly seats. High on its spirits, JJP played the role of Kingmaker in Haryana and was a coalition partner of the saffron party for more than 4 years.

Coming to 2024, after the poll debacle, the situations are dire for JJP and Dushyant. The people in Jat's heartland blamed Dushyant for betraying them and breaking their trust. People questioned JJP’s stand on the farmer protest issue and even protested against Dushyant’s entry into the areas where earlier people used to vote just on the names of the Chautala Clan. In such times, when the assembly polls are just 4 months away and Duhsyant’s JJP is in shambles, the political punditry says the future looks bleak for both the “Chautala” parties in Haryana. The political pundits even blame Dushyant for the Lok sabha debacle of both JJP and INLD, claiming that Dushyant’s “apostasy” and his love for power ruined people’s trust in the Chautala clan.

Sensing, the feeling of cynicism towards himself and his party, Dushyant has started working on strengthening the party organization. Nevertheless, as John Kenneth Galbraith said, “Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory”, it will be interesting to see how Dushyant and Abhay Chautala plan to revive their fortunes in politics.