Families are united, only parties are different: Dushyant Chautala

The Chautala families are united, only parties are different, Haryana Deputy Chief Minister and JJP leader Dushyant Chautala said on Tuesday, a day after his father Ajay Chautala met his estranged brother Abhay Chautala at a farmhouse.

Monday's amicable meeting between Ajay Chautala and Abhay Chautala triggered hopes of a festering family dispute that led to a vertical split in the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) last year coming to end.

Asked about the prospects of his Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and the INLD coming together, Dushyant Chautala, without taking any names, said they should reconsider what they have done.

"The families are united, only parties are different...and it is for them to consider who broke the ties," he told reporters here.

Dushyant Chautala launched the JJP in December 2018 after he, his younger brother Digvijay Chautala and Ajay Chautala were expelled from the Abhay Chautala-led INLD.

The JJP won 10 seats in the recently concluded Haryana Assembly polls and emerged as the kingmaker in the state which threw up a fractured mandate, with both the BJP and the Congress falling short of the majority mark in the 90-member House.

On the other hand, the INLD registered its worst performance in the polls, with the party bagging only one seat.

Ajay Chautala, who is serving a 10-year prison term in a teachers' recruitment scam along with his father Om Prakash Chautala and is out on a two-week furlough from Tihar Jail, termed the INLD's decision to expel him and his sons "wrong".

"I had said earlier also that we will force them to rethink. I had said we will create such circumstances that Chaudhary Om Prakash Chautala (INLD president) and INLD will be forced to rethink. They took a wrong decision which affected not only the people of Haryana but also the family," he said.

"Even now I am saying that he (O P Chautala) should rethink, he is our elder, we respect him. I am always of the belief that division in the family never helps anyone, it only causes loss," he added.

Ajay Chautala met Abhay Chautala at the family's farmhouse in Teja Khera in Haryana's Sirsa district along with his uncle Ranjit Singh Chautala.

Party sources said the two brothers met warmly and talked animatedly for quite some time.

They said it was after a long time since the split that the two brothers met on a happy note on an occasion like Diwali. The two had met a few months ago after the death of their mother Sneh Lata.

Ahead of the Haryana Assembly polls, some 'khaps' and even former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, a family friend of the Chautalas, had made efforts to bring the two brothers together but in vain.