Chandigarh: Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) president and five-time Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, whose family ruled the state’s dusty and defection-ridden politics for decades largely in rural areas with predominant Jat voters, died in Gurugram after a cardiac arrest on Friday.
He was 89 and cleared his Class 10 and 12 exams two years ago. He suffered cardiac arrest at his home and was rushed to Medanta Hospital but passed away.
Family said Chautala would be cremated at Teja Khera in Sirsa district on Saturday afternoon. His body would be kept there from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for people to pay respects.
Expressing grief, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X, “I am deeply saddened by the demise of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala ji. He was active in state politics for many years and strove constantly to carry forward the work of (Chaudhary) Devi Lal.”
Former Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhary Devi Lal was Om Prakash Chautala’s father.
Condoling Chautala’s death, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini said, “His contribution to the state politics will always be remembered.”
INLD spokesperson Rakesh Sihag said the former chief minister was feeling unwell in the morning. “However, a cardiac arrest took his life,” he added.
Om Prakash Chautala’s wife Sneh Lata died in August 2019. Chautala has three daughters and two sons, Abhay Singh Chautala and Ajay Singh Chautala.
Abhay, a former MLA from Ellenabad, was the Leader of Opposition in the state Legislative Assembly from October 2014 till March 2019.
The Chaudhary Devi Lal clan has ruled the state seven times, with Devi Lal being the Chief Minister twice and his son Om Prakash Chautala five times since December 1989.
From March 2000 to March 2005 was the longest term of Om Prakash Chautala. After that, the party emerged as the principal opposition party in 2014 polls with 19 legislators. In the previous Assembly, the party had a lone legislator, Abhay Chautala, who lost the polls in 2024.
The political landscape of the state dominated significantly by the Jat community witnessed a drastic change in the last one decade, ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, and continued its winning streak in 2024.
After the feud within the INLD, five-time Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala’s grandson Dushyant split the party vertically in 2018 and formed the JJP.
The INLD and its breakaway faction Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which played the kingmaker in the 2019 Assembly poll, were decimated in the October Assembly polls.
Jats, who constitute about 27 per cent of the electorate and once the traditional vote base of the state’s regional parties, seemed to have made a sway — a shift that proved detrimental both for the INLD and the JJP.
While the results came as a massive setback for Om Prakash Chautala’s grandson Dushyant Chautala, the youngest scion Arjun Chautala, however, managed to defeat Independent candidate and sitting legislator Ranjit Chautala — an outcome from which the party might hope that all is not lost yet.
Ranjit Chautala, who was the Cabinet minister in the previous BJP government in the state, is Om Prakash Chautala’s brother.
Both patriarch-dominated regional parties lost their grip, concentrated largely in rural areas, with their top leaders Abhay Singh Chautala of the INLD and his nephew Duhsyant Chautala of the JJP biting the dust.
Interestingly, the JJP, which was at the helm with the outgoing BJP government led by Union Minister Manohar Lal Khattar for four and a half years, had struggled to secure any seat or build a significant vote base across Haryana, marking a tough setback.
In the Assembly elections, the INLD partnered with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), while its breakaway faction JJP had an alliance with the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).
A special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Delhi on January 22, 2013, had sentenced the Chautalas, including Om Prakash, and eight others to 10 years in jail after finding them guilty of illegally recruiting 3,206 junior basic trained teachers in 2000.
He was released from Tihar jail in July 2021. Om Prakash Chautala cleared his Class 10 and 12 exams at the age of 87. He received his mark sheets from the Haryana board.
In 2021, Chautala had appeared for Class 12 exams under the Haryana Open Board. However, his result was withheld because he had not yet passed a Class 10 English exam. In order to get his Class 12 result released, he appeared for the Class 10 exam.
He scored 88 marks out of 100 in the English paper in his Class 10 examination last year.
Except for English, he had cleared his Class 10 exams from the National Institute of Open School in 2017 while serving a 10-year sentence in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in connection with the recruitment scam.
(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
(IANS)
