Haryana: Three Lal dynasties losing sheen in strongholds

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, June 7

The Lok Sabha poll results have given a blow to the political dynasties of three Lals of Haryana politics — Devi Lal, Bhajan Lal and Bansi Lal. Haryana had seen the dominance of the three Lals since 1960s. The rivalry of the three Lals, who had served as Chief Ministers in Haryana, started when the state was carved out of Punjab in 1966.

All four members of the Devi Lal family, who had fought the recent Lok Sabha elections from the Hisar and Kurukshetra seats from different parties, faced defeat. Former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal’s son Ranjit Singh, who was the BJP candidate from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat, put up the best performance among the Chautala clans. He was runner-up with 5,07,043 votes as he lost to Congress’ Jai Prakash. Two other candidates — Chautala family bahus Naina Chautala of the JJP and Sunaina Chautala of the INLD — polled just 22,303 and 22,032 votes, respectively. Another Chautala clan member — Abhay Singh Chautala of the INLD — came third from the Kurukshetra seat. He polled 78,708 votes. Except for Ranjit Chautala, all other three Chautalas lost their security deposits.

Sunaina Chautala, talking to The Tribune, claimed that the INLD was the real inheritor of Devi Lal’s legacy. She said that different issues had dominated the narratives in the Lok Sabha poll. “During campaign, I came across people who requested me to give one chance to them to vote the BJP-led NDA government out of power and they chose the INDIA bloc as an alternative. But it will be altogether a different scenario in the Assembly poll,” she added.

On the other hand, the family of Bhajan Lal (his grandson Bhavya Bishnoi is the BJP MLA from Adampur), failed to ensure a lead to BJP candidate Ranjit Singh from the Adampur segment, which is called the ‘pocket borough’ of the Bishnoi family and is part of the Hisar Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP candidate trailed by 6,384 votes in Adampur, which was a setback to the party. Significantly, Congress candidate Jai Prakash had lost the Adampur Assembly byelection to BJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi by about 18,000 votes in 2022.

Bishnoi told The Tribune that the people of Adampur still stood by them. “Even in 2019, Bhavya, who was the Congress candidate at that time — had trailed by about 23,000 votes from Adampur. But we bounced back in the Assembly poll the same year and I won by 29,000 votes,” he argued. He added that Bhajan Lal’s supporters were intact though they voted differently due to various reasons this time.

Similarly, Congress candidate Rao Dan Singh trailed in Bansi Lal’s traditional stronghold Tosham, which is represented by his daughter-in-law Kiran Choudhary, a sitting MLA from the constituency in the Bhiwani Mahendragarh Lok Sabha segment. Dan Singh was trailed by 8,063 votes to BJP’s Dharambir Singh.

Kiran, however, blamed it on the Congress candidate for the poor showing in Tosham. She said that the candidate took her help in campaigning. “Still, Congress workers worked for him in Tosham. Even Shruti had trailed from Tosham in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll by about 30,000 votes when she was the Congress candidate. And I regained my Assembly seat by about 18,000 votes,” she added.

Kiran said that the Congress candidate had trailed in his own segment Mahendragarh by about 4,800 votes so he could not blame her for the Tosham loss. She claimed that people remembered Bansi Lal as the architect of modern Haryana and there was no threat to his legacy in Tosham.