BJP umbrella gone, JJP faces exodus heat, Dushyant Chautala sweats

“He will teach the BJP a lesson.” That is how a group of youngsters in Karnal reacted when Dushyant Chautala’s newly minted Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) won 10 seats in their first poll outing in the October 2019 Assembly elections. Less than five years on, it is the BJP that appears to have done so.

Within days of the alliance breaking up in March, Dushyant — who once invited comparisons with his great-grandfather and former Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhry Devi Lal — is not only facing angry farmers on the ground but also staring at an exodus from his party.

Protests by irate villagers in Hisar on April 5 — they forced Dushyant to get down from his vehicle and walk — prompted the JJP leader’s mother Naina Chautala, MLA from Dabwali, to apologise on his behalf and request that her son not be punished “for the acts of the BJP”. Earlier, she had slammed those opposing Dushyant as “enemies of the state”.

Back in 2019, Dushyant chose to ally with the BJP even though the votes the JJP received were anti-BJP votes. Even at that time, there was disbelief on the ground at his decision and many political observers commented that he had sown the seeds of his defeat. But Dushyant who was appointed the Deputy CM said he was joining the government to serve his constituents.

The tall, bespectacled youngster who made it to the Limca Book of World Records when he became the youngest MP in 2014, defeating former CM Bhajan Lal’s son Kuldeep Bishnoi at the age of 26, seemed to have all the makings of a rising star. A management graduate from the US with a law degree to boot, he was barely 16 years old when he was first spotted on the campaign trail with his grandfather and former CM O P Chautala.

Later, a furious O P Chautala expelled him from