Chandigarh, Aug 17 In a setback to the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) led by Dushyant Chautala, ahead of the Assembly elections to be held in Haryana on October 1, its four legislators on Saturday resigned from all party positions and their primary memberships.
Speculations are rife that they may join either the Congress or the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).
A total of six legislators out of 10 have left the party.
The four MLAs are former minister Anoop Dhanak, Devender Babli, Ram Karan Kala and Ishwar Singh. They have resigned from party posts, citing personal reasons.
Sources in the party said their resignation hinted at a possible switch of loyalty to another party before the polls.
Dhanak, who served as State Minister for four-and-a-half years, was the national vice-president and a member of the Political Affairs Committee in the JJP. Babli, MLA from Tohana, was also a cabinet minister from the JJP quota.
Now only three legislators are in the party. They are Naina Chautala (Dushyant’s mother), MLA from the Badhra segment in Bhiwani district; Dushyant, MLA from Uchana Kalan in Jind, and Amarjeet Dhanda, MLA from the Julana segment in Jind.
Other MLAs Ram Niwas Suraj Khera and Jogi Ram Singh have been facing disqualification charges. Ram Kumar Gautam was the first MLA to resign from the party.
In October 2019, the BJP, which won 40 seats and was six short of a majority in the 90-member Assembly, formed the government in alliance with the then newly formed JJP led by Dushyant Chautala, who was Manohar Lal Khattar’s deputy in the government.
In March, the new government was formed under the helm of Nayab Singh Saini after the BJP severed its four-and-a-half-year-old ties with JJP. Saini succeeded Khattar, who is now a Union Minister.
Currently, the BJP has 41 MLAs, and along with the support of the Haryana Lokhit Party’s (HLP) lone MLA, Gopal Kanda, and an Independent, Nayan Pal Rawat, their tally is 43.
In the Opposition, the Congress has 29 MLAs and the INLD has one. Three Independents supported the Congress, and another Independent, Balraj Kundu, has been opposing the BJP.
Interestingly, the legacy of former Deputy Prime Minister and the state’s tallest Jat leader, Chaudhary Devi Lal, who with his family ruled the state’s dusty and defection-ridden politics for decades, is shrinking owing to the family feud.
After the feud within the INLD, five-time Chief Minister OP Chautala’s grandson Dushyant split the party vertically in 2018 and formed the JJP.
In Haryana, both regional outfits -- the INLD and its fledging JJP -- bank heavily on their traditional Jat votes, comprising 28 per cent of the state’s population.
This time, their “sinking ships” face a tough contest from the Congress, led by prominent Jat leader and two-time Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. However, the BJP is banking on non-Jat votes.
The INLD is banking more on its patriarch OP Chautala, who was released from Tihar Jail on July 2, 2021, after serving nine-and-a-half years of a 10-year prison sentence.
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