In the 90-member Haryana Assembly, no party seems to be getting a majority on its own making Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) a surprise package whose win on seats could help either the Congress or the BJP to form the government.
Dushyant Chautala is the president and founder of the JJP which, according to the latest trends, is leading on 9 -10 seats.
But... who is Chautala?
CHAUTALA’S FAMILY BACKGROUND
Dushyant is the great-grandson of former Deputy Prime Minister of India Devi Lal as well as the grandson of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala.
He is the son of Om Prakash Chautala, meaning the fourth generation of the politically relevant Chautala family. He further married into a bureaucratic family; his wife Meghna Chautala is the daughter of senior IPS officer Paramjeet Ahlawat.
The JJP's formation was also indicative of a split between the politically strong Chautala family.
DUSHYANT'S EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
Born in Daroli in Hisar district, Dushyant did his schooling from St Mary's School in Hisar as well as The Lawrence School in Himachal Pradesh.
Later, he studied Business from California State University in the United States. He continued to study once he returned to India, bagging a law degree from National Law University.
THE SPAT WHICH LED TO THE FORMATION OF THE JJP
The INLD Chief Om Prakash Chautala was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in the teacher recruitment scam in Haryana. His older son Ajay Chautala had been behind bars with him since 2013.
During the time that Om Prakash Chautala was fully active in politics, there was a consensus in the family that the older brother Ajay Chautala would carry out politics at the central level while the younger brother, Abhay Chautala, would take over the state.
Meanwhile, once Ajay went to jail, his son Dushyant became active in politics. He won his first election by defeating Kuldeep Bishnoi, son of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls contesting on a INLD ticket (JJP was formed in 2018).
He won by a margin of about 30,000 votes. At the age of 26, this made him the youngest MP in India. He was growing in popularity and it was then that mistrust and the possibility of a divide began to pervade the family.
The relationship between family members got very bitter, eventually leading to Om Prakash taking disciplinary action against Ajay's sons. Both Dushyant and Digvijay were expelled.
Consequently, to reaffirm his political ambitions, Dushyant announced the formation of the JJP with the picture of his grandfather. However, his association with the INLD ended in 2018, after he founded the JJP. His defenestration from the party was a very public and charged fallout.
DUSHYANT’S POLITICS AFTER JJP’S CREATION
A few weeks after the JJP was founded, the party came second in the Jind by-poll pushing Congress’s Randeep Surjewala to the third spot.
Dushyant however, tasted defeat in 2019 when he lost the Lok Sabha polls from Hisar constituency against BJP’s Brijendra Singh. He won his Assembly seat from the jat-dominated Uchana Kalan constituency against sitting MLA Prem Lata, who had defeated him in the 2014 polls by a margin of over 7,000 votes.
With the counting running into its last few rounds, it shall be more clear if any party crosses the 45 mark, thereby making it clear how important Dushyant’s JJP will be in deciding the fate of Haryana’s government.
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