Chandigarh: The upcoming October 5 assembly election in Haryana is being seen as a battle for survival for Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and its splinter outfit Jannayak Janta Dal (JJP), helmed by the Chautala family.
The JJP had come into existence in December 2018 - after a crippling vertical split in the INLD following a feud in Chautala family - and won 10 seats in 2019 following which JJP leader Dushyant Chautala became the deputy chief minister forging a post-election coalition with BJP, which came to power for the second term in a row.
The split took place after the party supremo and the former five-time chief minister Om Prakash Chautala expelled his grandsons, Dushyant and Digvijay, for indulging in anti-party activities and later also threw out his elder son, Ajay Chautala, for trying to run a parallel "party''.
The INLD has been out of power for the past about two decades and on a slide since. Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government had two terms in a row till 2014 when BJP came to power and is eyeing for a hat-trick.
The INLD, which has only MLA in the House of 90, has a tie-up with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) this election and hopes to fare well; INLD would contest 53 out of the total 90 seats and the BSP on the remaining 37. Abhay Chautala hopes that the voters have now realised the JJP was formed because of its leaders’ greed for power, and the party's voters would return to INLD. "Also, the leaders of other parties, BJP and Congress, who are frustrated because of their policies, are in touch of INLD’’, INLD media head Rakesh Sihag told FPJ.
7 OUT 10 JJP MLAs HAVE QUIT PARTY
The JJP, on the other hand, has also suffered an internal crisis with seven of its total 10 MLAs leaving the party just a few weeks ahead of the upcoming polls and has been left with only three MLAs – Dushyant, his mother Naina Chautala and Amarjit Dhanda. The JJP has stitched an alliance with Chandra Shekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) - according to which it would contest on 70 seats and the ASP, on the remaining 20 seats in Haryana.
The party leaders allege rampant corruption during Congress regime and that the party has been a divided house and says the BJP would be wiped out of the state this time because of its anti-people policies.
