The feud between the brothers and their uncle Abhay Chautala is likely to intensify, because their jailed father Ajay is getting out on parole Saturday.
New Delhi: Nearly a month after cracks in Haryana’s Chautala family surfaced, sources say patriarch and Indian National Lok Dal chief Om Prakash Chautala has expelled grandsons Dushyant and Digvijay Chautala from the party’s primary membership.
Sources say Dushyant has also been removed from the parliamentary committee of the party.
The decision was conveyed to the party secretariat via a letter signed by Chautala senior, in which he is believed to have written: “Since Dushyant and Digvijay are my own family, this is a very difficult decision for me. But Dushyant is now invoking (Chautala’s father and former deputy prime minister) Devi Lal; it seems he doesn’t feel the same way.”
Also read: History repeats itself in INLD family feud, now Dushyant Chautala invokes Devi Lal
Chautala, who is serving a 10-year jail sentence for corruption in a teachers’ recruitment scam, is believed to have conducted an investigation and found his grandsons’ behaviour unacceptable.
The trouble in the family is likely to intensify as Ajay Singh Chautala, father of Dushyant and Digvijay who is jailed alongside the elder Chautala, gets out on parole Saturday.
Suspended for indiscipline
Dushyant, the Lok Sabha MP for Hisar, and Digvijay had been suspended from the family-run party on 14 October.
Digvijay was the national president of the party’s students’ wing, INSO.
Speaking at a public rally in Yamunanagar Monday, Dushyant claimed that the show-cause notice issued to him and his brother was not from his grandfather.
“Some people are conspiring to weaken the party,” he said.
It is said that trouble has been brewing between the brothers and their uncle Abhay Chautala, the MLA from Ellenabad, for almost a year now.
Also read: It’s ally hunting season in Haryana as Chautalas break up with Badals
The trigger for this snowballing of issues was a rally held on 7 October in Gohana, where members of the student and youth wing “hooted out” Abhay. Instead, they cheered for Dushyant, pitching him as the next chief ministerial candidate.
The report has been corrected to accurately reflect the fact that only Dushyant Chautala was a member of the INLD’s parliamentary committee. The error is regretted.