Bhajan Lal family citadel falls after 56 years as ex-IAS officer edges out Kuldeep Bishnoi son

Parkash too has a connection to the Bhajan Lal family as his uncle Ramji Lal, a former Rajya Sabha MP, was its longtime loyalist.

Among the 1.78 lakh voters in Adampur, Jats make up nearly one-third of the total votes. The community was said to have largely voted for Parkash. In the recent Lok Sabha polls too, the community had reportedly rallied behind the winning Congress candidate from Hisar, Jai Prakash.

In terms of the communities’ numerical strengths in the Adampur seat, Jats are followed by OBCs, Bishnois and SCs. Bishnois have been traditional supporters of the Bhajan Lal family, which belongs to the community.

After the results were announced on Tuesday, Parkash, who is from the OBC Jangra caste, said: “The (Bhajan Lal) family name is respectable for me. The interests of 36 biradari (communities) and the development of Adampur would be my priority. I will stay among those people and be a comrade during their ups and downs.”

Bhajan Lal’s importance

Like most founders of the political dynasties, Bhajan Lal had risen up the ranks, starting from a stint with the panchayats. He won his first Assembly seat in a bypoll for Adampur in 1968.

In 1979, Bhajan Lal became the CM for the first time when he along with 37 Janata Party MLAs joined the Congress. He became the CM again in 1982 and 1991.

However, the Bhajan Lal family’s influence in state politics has been waning since 2005, when the late stalwart had lost the CM’s race to then emerging Congress’s Jat face Bhupinder Singh Hooda. In a conciliatory move, Bhajan Lal’s elder son Chander Mohan was made the Deputy CM in the Hooda government then.

Bhajan Lal left the Congress to form the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) with his younger son Kuldeep Bishnoi in 2007. The HJC won six seats in the 2009 Assembly polls, but five of his MLAs defected to the Congress, which, with 40 seats, had then fallen short of a majority in the 90-member House.

Kuldeep Bishnoi faced more jolts after Bhajan Lal passed away in 2011. He managed to retain his father’s Hisar Lok Sabha seat in the bypoll with BJP support. But by the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the HJC lost both Hisar and Sirsa seats it had contested in alliance with the BJP. Kuldeep himself lost from Hisar to Dushyant Chautala, who was then the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate.

Ahead of the 2014 Assembly polls, the HJC snapped ties with the BJP, which went on to win 47 seats and formed the government. The HJC was reduced to just two MLAs — Kuldeep and his wife Renuka Bishnoi. After Kuldeep merged his party with the Congress in 2016, his son Bhavya was fielded from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat in 2019, but he lost even his security deposit.

After a tussle with Hooda, Kuldeep left the party in 2022 and joined the BJP. In the Adampur Assembly seat from which Kuldeep had to resign, the BJP fielded his son Bhavya, which won it in a bypoll with 16,000 votes.

In the current Assembly polls, two other members of the Bhajan Lal’s family were also in the fray. Ex-deputy CM Chander Mohan, 58, won the Panchkula seat as a Congress candidate, while Bhajan Lal’s nephew Dura Ram lost from Fatehabad on the BJP’s ticket.