Chapter 10

POST-1977 HARYANA: POLITICAL INSTABILITY RETURNS

Haryana politics started showing signs of turbulence two years after the formation of the Chaudhary Devi Lal-led Janata Party Government on 21 June 1977. In the Assembly elections held on 10 June, the Congress had been trounced.

Devi Lal, popularly called Tau (father’s elder brother), was born in a Jat Hindu family of the Sihag clan on 16 September 1914 in the Teja Khera village of what is now Haryana’s Sirsa district. He was a wealthy landlord from Chautala village (now in Haryana) who owned 2750 bighas of land. (One acre is made up of approximately 6 bighas.) Devi Lal studied up to middle school. He also trained as a wrestler at Badal (now in Punjab), the native village of Parkash Singh Badal. His stint as a trainee wrestler at Badal helped in bringing the Badal and Devi Lal families closer to each other.

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I had built up a fairly good equation with Devi Lal over the years. He was a freedom fighter and a simple-hearted person (at least in the initial years of his life). He had the knack of winning the hearts of the villagers. He would visit their homes, discuss their problems and share meals with them. He made road and rail blockades as the most effective modes of protest by the people for getting their grievances redressed. During a tour of Teja Khera before he shifted to Delhi in late 1989, Devi Lal had narrated to me the episode that prompted him to pioneer the concept of the old-age pension scheme in Haryana.

Sometime in 1988, when he was chief minister, he rang me up one morning and asked me to accompany him on a two-day tour of Haryana. As he put it: ‘Get ready. Om will come to pick you up.’ I was then not aware of the identity of ‘Om’. I talked to the resident editor of the Indian Express in Chandigarh, Prem Kumar, to ask him whether or not I should go along with Devi Lal. He replied in the affirmative. After getting ready I went to drop my grandson at his school. When I returned home, I found Om Prakash Chautala (who later became chief minister of Haryana in December 1989), the favourite son of Devi Lal, waiting for me in the lawns of my house at Chandigarh. He wanted me to leave immediately ‘as Chaudhary Sahib [referring to Devi Lal] is waiting for us at the airport. I would be reprimanded for being late’.

There were only five persons in the state plane. On landing at Sirsa airport, I accompanied Devi Lal to his Teja Khera farm. We made a round of the farm and then proceeded in his car on a tour of the villages. While discussing the projects he had undertaken in the area, Devi Lal asked: ‘Do you know why I introduced the old-age pension in the state?’ Without waiting for my expectedly negative answer, he went on: ‘One winter morning [when he was not in power] while I was having a stroll in the family’s Teja Khera farm where Om was tending the plants, I advised him how to save the fruit plants from the vagaries of winter. He responded in a derogatory language … about my old-age capabilities and telling me: “Budhau tu apna kaam kar, mujhe apna kaam karne de” [old man do your work and let me do mine]. I [wondered] if a son of the former chief minister treated his aged father in such manner, what would be the state of old persons of the poor or even middle-class families? I then decided that old persons could get the respect of their family members only if they also had some money to sustain themselves. Old-age pension was a way to make old men earning hands.’

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Devi Lal’s term as the Janata Party’s first chief minister prematurely came to an end in June 1979 when his cabinet minister Bhajan Lal, with the help of a majority of the Janata Party MLAs, revolted against him. (Bhajan Lal had then switched over from the Congress to the Janata Party.) I still recall vividly the image of Devi Lal and Bhajan Lal’s parting handshake on 29 June 1979 morning in the chief minister’s room (in the Chandigarh Secretariat) with a large map of Haryana hanging in the background. This historic occasion was captured by the Indian Express’ chief photographer, Swadesh Talwar. The photograph was published in the next morning edition of the newspaper.

Believing that the vanquished needed sympathy, I went to Devi Lal’s official residence the same day (29 June). The vast front lawns of the chief minister’s house, which used to be packed with people (mainly villagers) when he was in power, were deserted, with only the security guards on duty at the entrance. Devi Lal and his elder brother Sahib Ram were sitting in the drawing room. The atmosphere inside the house was depressing.

Always informal with me, Devi Lal invited me to lunch with his family members. I, however, wished to be excused as I was in a hurry to file my report. Offering sympathies to Devi Lal for being toppled by his own protégé, I left for the Secretariat.

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From 1980 to 2005, as in 1966–68, Haryana was again plagued by political instability. One party after the other came to power: the Congress, the Janata Party, the Devi Lal clan’s Samajvadi Janata Party and its reincarnations (the Janata Dal and the Indian National Lok Dal) and Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party.

After Indira Gandhi came back as prime minister in the wake of the Congress’s sweeping victory in the January 1980 Lok Sabha polls, Haryana maintained its reputation of being the state of ‘Aya Rams and Gaya Rams’. Bhajan Lal (who had earlier earned the title of ‘master defector’) shifted his loyalty back to the Congress and retained his chief ministership after converting his Janata Party Government into a Congress one. In the May 1982 Assembly elections, the Congress attained victory and Bhajan Lal again became chief minister.

Devi Lal, who had felt betrayed by his protégé, struck back. Nobody had even imagined that Haryana’s Jat leader could go in for the ‘politics of social engineering’ in Haryana’s Jat-dominated, caste-ridden society. This concept was later successfully employed first by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh to become chief minister (in June 1995) and then by the Akali Dal to ride to power for securing a second successive term in office in early 2012 by cementing its alliance with the BJP (see Chapter 29 for details).

Learning from his past experience, Devi Lal realized that it would not be possible for him to capture power on the strength of Jat votes alone. Hence, he formed a united front made up of all castes in the early 1980s and named it the Haryana Sangharsh Samiti (HSS). He declared that the HSS would fight for getting the state’s demands accepted by the Centre and it would contest future elections. The HSS, which comprised mainly Devi Lal’s Lok Dal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (whose primary vote banks were Jats and non-Jats, respectively), and the Janata Party, launched mass agitations, alleging that the July 1985 Rajiv—Longowal Accord (for details, see Chapter 20) was unfair to Haryana.

The Congress high command in New Delhi realized that the challenge posed by the HSS could not be countered by Bhajan Lal whose political craft could manage individuals but not the masses. Instead of being an asset, the Congress top brass concluded that he could prove to be a liability for the party in the Haryana Assembly elections due in 1987. As a result, he was asked to quit and Bansi Lal was nominated by the party high command as chief minister in July 1985. But even the seasoned Bansi Lal could not check the slide in the Congress’ political fortunes. The party could win only five seats in the 17 June 1987 Assembly elections, its lowest ever tally ever since Haryana came into existence on 1 November 1966. On the contrary, the Haryana Sangharsh Samiti swept the polls, winning a record 85 seats in the 90-member Assembly. Devi Lal took over as chief minister on 17 July 1987 for the second time.

The Congress leadership was either unaware of the ground realities or was fed with cooked up stories about the causes of the party’s electoral defeat. Some Haryana Congress leaders who met Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi claimed that he held the view that the ‘Hindu backlash of Punjab incidents and the terrorist actions in Delhi and Punjab and the happenings in Punjab [details given in later chapters] were mainly responsible for the Congress rout’.

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The government that assumed power in Haryana in 1987 was a representative of both rural and urban interests. But gradually, it turned into a protector of the interests of the landowning class. A section of the rural elite and the members of Devi Lal’s ruling family started diversifying their political activities by taking up business activities, particularly real estate, through both blatant and clandestine misuse of state power.

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Later, two major factors triggered the process that led to the government’s downfall. One was the tightening of the Devi Lal family’s grip over the state’s power structure. The other was the succession war between two of Devi Lal’s sons: Om Prakash Chautala and his younger brother Ranjit Singh.

The political instability resulting from the succession war had a dramatic beginning. This was the time when Haryana politics was about to slip into turmoil.

On 6 January 1988, late in the evening, I rang up a senior IAS officer of the chief minister’s Secretariat in Chandigarh to seek more details about certain decisions that the cabinet had taken in the morning. During the course of our conversation, he casually remarked that there was unusual political activity in the Secretariat even after office hours. He, however, did not know what it was all about. My phone calls to a number of ministers did not yield any useful information except that Chief Minister Devi Lal had held an informal meting with his cabinet colleagues. The ministers were unwilling to divulge any information, perhaps fearing that their telephones were tapped. I also rang up Bansi Lal’s estranged protégé, former Chief Minister Banarsi Das Gupta, who was then deputy chief minister and one of Devi Lal’s confidants. Although he was in the middle of his dinner, he came on the line. When I asked him the reason behind the unusual political activity in the Secretariat, he cryptically responded that ‘nothing important happened’. But the tone of his voice betrayed the hollowness of his statement.

My curiosity was stirred. Around 11.30 p.m., I asked the common family doctor of ours and of a minister to go to the latter’s residence and find out what exactly had happened at the cabinet meeting. He came back around 12.30 a.m. with the relevant details. He informed me that a cyclostyled draft of resignation had been given to all the ministers and chairmen of Haryana’s boards and corporations who were also present in the meeting. Two senior ministers, including Banarsi Das Gupta, asked all of them to sign the resignation letters ‘in order to consolidate the position of the chief minister’.

Such a drastic step had become necessary as the cabinet was divided into two factions: each led by one of Devi Lal’s two sons. Om Prakash Chautala’s opponents suspected that the resignations were aimed at ousting them from the ministry. The real motive was to create a situation conducive for Chautala to ride unopposed to power as Devi Lal’s successor.

I reached the Indian Express office around 1 a.m. on 7 January 1988. The chief subeditor was about to release the late city edition before going home. I immediately alerted all Indian Express editions to wait for an important story. The exclusive news item captioned All Haryana Ministers Resign was used as the lead in the Chandigarh edition, while other editions also prominently published it on their front pages.

In the subsequent months, the media continued to carry reports about the factional war in Devi Lal’s party.

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The manner in which political leaders blame the media for publishing what they term ‘mischievous news’ was illustrated by the strongly worded indictment issued by Devi Lal on 13 September 1988. In his 900-word statement circulated by Haryana’s Public Relations Department, he condemned the media for publishing news about the succession war between his two sons: ‘The Chief Ministership of Haryana cannot be the paternal property of anyone which can be passed on by the father to his sons or for that matter to anyone else …. It is a mischievous move of my enemies to continuously propagate and assert that in the near future one or the other sons of Devi Lal would be taking over from him and that Devi Lal would be shifting to Delhi to play a greater role in the national politics … I have absolutely no intention to leave the Chief Ministership of Haryana now or in future …. There is no rivalry amongst my sons …’

But what followed belied Devi Lal’s vehement assertions. He shifted to the Centre after getting elected to the Lok Sabha in November 1989 and was inducted into the Union cabinet. He later became deputy prime minister on 2 December 1989.

But before moving to the Centre, he manipulated things so as to instal his elder son Om Prakash Chautala as chief minister of Haryana on the same day that he became deputy prime minister. Chautala, however, could not stay in power for long; he had to quit on 22 May 1990. After more than 20 years, Haryana was again in the grip of political instability: chief ministers came and went quickly.

Chautala occupied the coveted office four times. Though not highly qualified, he was a very impressive orator and an effective administrator ‘blessed’ with a vindictive mindset. Chauatla had perhaps never read Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. On the contrary, he excelled in ‘how to lose friends and antagonize people’. His practising this adage led to his ouster from the chief ministership thrice.

His first three terms as chief minister proved to be short-lived: 2 December 1989 to 22 May 1990; 12 July 1990 to 17 July 1990; and 22 March 1991 to 6 April 1991. It was Devi Lal who was instrumental in elevating his son thrice to the top post. The first time that he became chief minister, Chautala was not even a legislator! It was Devi Lal, who, through a contrived majority of the ruling legislature party, declared him elected as the leader of the party. For administering the oath of chief ministership to his son for the third time, the father requisitioned an Indian Air Force plane to bring the governor of Haryana, D. L. Mandal (who had gone to Delhi), to Chandigarh.

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But soon there was a rebellion against Chautala in the ruling Samajvadi Janata Party, which led to the imposition of president’s rule.

Chautala had to quit as chief minister during his first two stints partly due to the controversies that marred his functioning and partly because of the Centre’s pressure.

The people of Haryana reacted to the political instability caused by the frequent changes in chief ministership by voting the Congress back into power in the 1991 mid-term poll. For the third time, Bhajan Lal took over as chief minister on 23 July 1991. He remained in office till 9 May 1996.

Call it the irony of putter moh (father’s love for his son) or something similar, Devi Lal who treated Chautala, the eldest of his three sons, as his political heir had often to face embarrassment due to his favourite son’s actions. When he was chief minister, he even had to announce in the State Assembly (in late 1978) that he had disowned Chautala after the latter was charged by the Customs authorities with smuggling watches from abroad. While flying back from Japan, Chautala was detained at the Delhi airport with dozens of electronic wristwatches. He was let off after paying heavy penalties.

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Haryana politics took another distinct turn in the latter half of the 1990s.

After parting company with the Congress in 1996, Bansi Lal formed the Haryana Vikas Party. His campaign for prohibition evoked a massive positive response from Haryana women. The BJP also opted for an alliance with Bansi Lal in preference to one with Chautala. The alliance won the 1996 Assembly elections and formed the government, with Bansi Lal taking over as chief minister on 11 May 1996. But unlike in his previous stint as CM from 1968 to 1975, he neither had a grip over the administration nor did he possess the dynamism for developing the state, which had earned him the title of ‘the architect of modern Haryana’.

Like Devi Lal in 1988, Bansi Lal too invited me on 23 October 1998 to accompany him on a two-day tour of Haryana. I was then no longer working for Indian Express; I had started freelancing and covered Punjab and Haryana for the India Press Agency besides syndicating my weekly column Currents and Undercurrents.

The tour with Bansi Lal helped me gain an insight into his changed frame of mind. He was once considered Haryana’s strongest administrator-chief minister. We stayed in the Karnal Circuit House. After dinner, I had a long chat with him.

Bansi Lal lamented the fact that he had to bear the entire burden of work; all the ministers were inefficient and were becoming liabilities for him. I found him to be a helpless chief minister, which was in sharp contrast to what he was in the early 1970s, when he was in total command. He was now a different person. While expressing his frustration, he grumbled that ‘the work and political culture have completely changed since my earlier days as CM. Now ministers are interested more in transfers of government employees than doing their normal work. Some of them make money in transfers. Due to my political compulsions, I cannot do much to improve things as I used to during my first term [1968–75]. I am heading a coalition ministry and do not have a comfortable majority.’