Brand Chautala loses sheen after split

Bhartesh Singh Thakur in Chandigarh

THE Indian National Lok Dal had its worst-ever electoral outing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when its vote share fell below 2 per cent. Since its formation in 1996, it had never garnered less than 15 per cent of all the votes polled.

The party received a jolt when national president and former CM Om Prakash Chautala was awarded 10-year rigorous imprisonment, along with his eldest son Ajay Singh Chautala, in a job scam in January 2013. They could not contest polls so the reins were handed over to younger son Abhay Singh Chautala and he became the Leader of Opposition too in 2014.

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The INLD has been in a free fall since 2018, when both Ajay and Abhay parted ways. Dushyant Chautala, eldest son of Ajay, who was expelled from the INLD, formed the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) on December 9, 2018, and tried to claim the legacy of former Deputy PM Chaudhary Devi Lal.

With Dushyant, a substantial cadre of the INLD also shifted to the JJP. For him, the INLD has been the main target for poaching.

The split confused the Jat vote bank in Sirsa, Hisar and Fatehabad, the mainstay of the party. The Congress may not have won any seat in the 2019 LS polls but it appeared to have garnered a chunk of the INLD votes, as its vote share rose from 22.99 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls to 28.42 per cent.

Efforts toward merger

The INLD has given a clear signal that it desperately wants the JJP to merge with it. Former Punjab CM and family friend of the Chautalas, Parkash Singh Badal, has been leading the efforts for unity along with khap panchayats. Dushyant, however, clarified on September 12 that merger was not possible. Such is the situation that family members from the Chautala clan may find it difficult to get re-elected. The party did not nurture any leader outside the dynasty. Its former state president Ashok Arora also left after 35 years.

The INLD had won 19 seats in the 2014 Assembly polls and was the principal Opposition party, but it has been reduced to four MLAs in five years due to desertions to the BJP and the JJP. It had a higher vote percentage than Congress in both the 2014 LS polls (24.43 per cent), when it had won two seats, and 2014 Assembly polls (24.11 per cent).

With the Modi wave, Chautala Sr in jail, caste polarisation between Jats and non-Jats, and no prominent face, the INLD either came fourth or fifth in most of the constituencies in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

JJP in electoral fray

The JJP entered the electoral contest with the Jind byelection in February this year and came second. Dushyant’s younger brother Digvijay lost to Krishan Lal Midha of the BJP by 12,930 votes. The Congress came third while the INLD was a poor fifth with just 3,454 votes, though it was in alliance with the BSP.

The election was necessitated due to the death of Krishan Lal Midha’s father Hari Chand Midha, who had won the seat on an INLD ticket.

The first casualty of the Jind byelection was the BSP walking out of the alliance with the  INLD. The Dalit-based party then tied up with former Kurukshetra MP Raj Kumar Saini’s Loktanter Suraksha Party (LSP) for the Lok Sabha polls, but lost miserably with a reduced vote percentage.

The JJP entered the LS contest in alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which does not have a substantial presence in the state. It couldn’t even retain the Hisar Lok Sabha seat, where it came second, while on the rest of the seats its candidates were placed at the third, fourth or fifth place. It got just 5.41 per cent vote share, but Dushyant was quick to point out that it was more than the INLD.

Post the Lok Sabha polls, the BSP walked out of alliance with the LSP and tied up with the JJP. The JJP was offering 40 seats but still the BSP walked out in less than a month.

“The INLD is no longer a party of Jats. They can opt for Bhupinder Singh Hooda if he is named the CM candidate. In the Modi-Shah era, only those regional parties will survive which can identify themselves with a state like the DMK and the TRS. Caste-based parties will not survive,” opines Prof Ashutosh Kumar of the Department of Political Science, Panjab University.

Both the INLD and the JJP have failed to go beyond their rural bases and have a bleak future in view of the confusion around the merger. Time is running out for them.