Om Prakash Chautala, the leader of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the former chief minister of Haryana, died Friday afternoon at his home in Gurugram. He was eighty-nine.
Chautala, the son of former deputy prime minister Devi Lal, served as Haryana’s chief minister for a record five terms.
Chautala will be cremated on Saturday afternoon at Teja Khera in Sirsa district, according to family sources. From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., his body would be held there so that people might visit and pay their respects.
Three daughters and two sons, Ajay Singh Chautala and Abhay Singh Chautala, survive Chautala.
Abhay formerly served as the Haryana Assembly’s Leader of the Opposition. Arjun Chautala, his son, is a lawmaker from Haryana’s Rania constituency. During the BJP-JJP alliance government led by Manohar Lal Khattar, Dushyant Chautala, the son of Ajay Chautala, served as Haryana’s deputy chief minister.
The former chief minister was feeling good in the morning, according to INLD spokesperson Rakesh Sihag, who talked to The Indian Express. Sihag said, “But he had hiccups before he took his last breath, and a cardiac arrest took his life.”
In 2013, Chautala was found guilty of corruption in connection with a recruitment case and given a 10-year prison sentence. Ajay Chautala, his older son, was one of the 55 people found guilty in the case.
His political career suffered greatly as a result of this conviction because he was unable to run for office after the ruling. In July 2021, Chautala was freed from Tihar prison.
After severing his connections with the National Democratic Alliance, he has now taken up the cause of creating a third front in the nation. In 2021, he met with former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as part of his efforts. Nitish Kumar, NCP leader Sharad Pawar, Akali Dal’s Sukhbir Singh Badal, RJD leader and then-Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, and Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant were all present during a Chautala rally in Fatehabad in September 2022.
Chautala’s Entry in Politics
Chautala was born in a little village close to Sirsa in Haryana. His father, Chaudhary Devi Lal, was instrumental in the formation of Haryana in 1966 and later held the positions of chief minister and deputy prime minister of India. In 1996, he also started the INLD party. Online sources claim that Chautala followed in his father’s footsteps by choosing politics over education. He joined the Janata Dal (People’s Party) and was elected to the Haryana legislature in 1970.
There were some controversies throughout Chautala’s early political career. He was arrested at the Delhi airport in 1978 for bringing a lot of wristwatches into the nation, which was one significant occurrence. Although this caused a rift with his father, Chautala subsequently made an effort to repair his political reputation. For his father’s victorious 1987 election campaign, he spearheaded the “Nyaya Yudh” campaign. In the 1990s, he coordinated anti-corruption demonstrations. He was accused of participating in the murder of a political rival in 1990, though.
In 1987, Chautala was chosen to serve in the Rajya Sabha, where he remained till 1990. He succeeded his father, who had been named India’s deputy prime minister, as chief minister of Haryana in December 1989. He had to resign in May 1990, though, after failing to obtain a seat in the state parliament in the allotted six months. In 1990–91, he briefly held the position of chief minister once more after winning a by-election.
Chautala entered the assembly through a 1993 by-election following the Congress Party’s victory in the Haryana elections of 1991. He quit in 1995 in opposition to an agreement to share Haryana’s water resources with nearby states. Chautala became the head of the opposition after winning a seat in the 1996 elections. In 1998, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) was established. Chautala was elected chief minister a fourth time in 1999 when the Haryana Vikas Party lost its majority.
From December 1989 to May 1990, July 1990 to July 1990, March 1991 to April 1991, and July 1999 to March 2005, Chautala was the chief minister of Haryana.
Also Read:
Shubhangi Gupta is a distinguished content writer and the visionary founder of The Unpleasant – Acha Nahi Sabse Sacha. With a Master’s degree in Commerce from University of Lucknow, Shubhangi has seamlessly blended her academic background with her passion for reading and writing, embarking on a successful career as a content writer since 2019.
