Om Prakash Chautala, who died of cardiac arrest on Friday at the age of 89, was sworn in chief minister of Haryana five times in his five-decade-long career, with his shortest stint being for five days, and his longest, five years. For almost two decades, from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, he was a force to reckon with in Haryana politics.
Near-mythologised for his rustic charm, Chautala was the eldest son of former deputy Prime Minister Chaudhary Devi Lal. In 1978, after Chautala was detained by the customs officials for carrying a large number of wristwatches from an overseas trip, Devi Lal distanced himself from his son, but in late 1989, when he became deputy PM, it was Chautala who took his place as CM of Haryana, elbowing out his younger son Ranjit Singh.
That appointment was followed by the infamous Meham bypoll in February 1990 which Chautala had to win to grant legitimacy to his appointment as the chief minister. The Election Commission (EC) cancelled the bypoll and ordered a fresh one in May 1990 which also it eventually set aside. Not surprisingly, his first stint as CM ended on May 22, 1990, although he returned for a second stint (of five days) between July 12 and July 16 the same year, and a third one for 15 days between March 22 and April 5 the following year. He had a relatively longer stint in his fourth attempt, 223 days between July 24, 1999 and March 2, 2000, before finally serving a full five-year term between March 2, 2000 and February 5, 2005.
That was the peak of the Indian National Lok Dal, founded by Devi Lal and Chautala in 1996, from the remains of the Samajwadi Janata Dal, which the former and Chandraskehar founded in 1990, and which itself was a splinter of the Janata Dal.
Known for a sharp tongue, Chautala, a six-time MLA, was feared by his contemporaries and government functionaries. His former cabinet colleague, Sampat Singh said that Om Prakash Chautala had a tremendous grip on the administration. “When it came to running the government, his abilities were second to none. No one could take him for a ride.”
His five-year term helped revive Haryana’s fortunes according to some. Former Haryana minister and a fierce Chautala critic, Karan Dalal said that the INLD leader “was a brave man and unlike many politicians, he had the courage to take tough decisions. He imposed levies like local area development tax and value added tax (VAT) despite knowing these were unpopular — but they provided financial vibrancy to the state exchequer.”
But Chautala’s stint as chief minister was also peppered with controversies: the firing on protesting farmers in Kandela, tabling a controversial bill to set up casinos in the state, granting reprieves to hardened criminals and irregularities in recruitments granted enough fodder to the opposition.
Some of these continued to haunt him after his stint as chief minister.
The biggest setback for the former chief minister came in 2013 when he and his elder son Ajay Singh were convicted and sentenced for 10 years by a special CBI court in a case pertaining to alleged irregularities in the recruitment of schoolteachers in Haryana. While he completed his prison term in 2021 and was released from Tihar jail, another special CBI court in New Delhi, in 2022, sentenced him to four years of rigorous imprisonment for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. However, the Delhi high court suspended the four-year sentence during the pendency of Chautala’s appeal against the conviction.
The biggest political jolt to the INLD supremo came in 2018 when his elder son, Ajay Singh and grandsons, Dushyant and Digvijay Chautala caused a vertical split in the INLD to form a new political outfit, the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP). Dushyant went on became the deputy chief minister in 2019 when he joined hands with the BJP to form the government in the state. INLD’s political fortunes sank with the rise of the JJP and the party could win just one seat in 2019. It recovered marginally to win 2 in 2024, but the JJP lapsed into irrelevance, winning none.