All eyes on Ajay’s Nov 17 Jind meet
IN THE MEET, AJAY CHAUTALA IS LIKELY TO HIT BACK AT THE ABHAY CHAUTALA CAMP OVER EXPULSION
OF HIS SONS
CHANDIGARH: The meeting of the executive committee of the Haryana’s principal opposition party — Indian National Lok Dal — at Jind on November 17, called by senior party leader Ajay Chautala, is crucial as he is likely to hit back at the Abhay Chautala camp over expulsion of both his sons, Hisar MP Dushyant and students’ wing leader Digvijay, from the party on November 2.
Though Dushyant, who spoke to media for the first time after the expulsion on Saturday, only said that his father could take any decision being the secretary general of the state unit of INLD, he refused to elaborate. Senior party leaders requesting anonymity say that Ajay Chautala could make new appointments or even suspend some people in the upcoming meet.
“Unlike the expulsion of Dushyant and Digvijay for which there was no signed communication by party national president Om Prakash Chautala, the party state secretary general Ajay Chautala has the power to take decisions with state executives as per the party constitution,” a senior leader said. The meeting has been named as beginning of the ‘Nyaya Yudh’ (battle for justice).
Currently on a two-week parole, Ajay, who is the elder son of party supremo and four-time chief minster Om Prakash Chautla, is serving imprisonment in the JBT recruitment case along with his father, is critical of his sons’ expulsion. His wife Naina, who is MLA from Dabwali, too has openly rued it.
Ajay has termed the ongoing tussle within his clan as the epic Mahabharat war and that it was upto workers’ to choose from the Pandavas or Duryodhan. Though he did not name anyone, the ‘Duryodhan’ remark is as an oblique reference to his younger brother Abhay Chautala.
Dushyant too, on Saturday, referred to some ‘Jaichands’ trying to hijack the party by throwing him out.
To the question on party MLAs and other leaders’ support to him, Dushyant pointedly said that as one could see a couple of them with him as of now, one would see all of them at Jind on November 17. Out of power for the past 14 years, the INLD had 47 MLAs in 2000, but had fallen to nine in 2005, while in 2010, led by Abhay, the party raised its MLAs’ number to 31, though in 2014 it could manage only 19 seats out of total 90.