In December 2018, then Lok Sabha MP and now Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala of the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) had said that if his grandfather and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) supremo Om Prakash Chautala were ever to leave the INLD, he (Dushyant) would try to draw the patriarch into the JJP. “Jis din woh rashtriya adhyaksh nahin rahenge… agar woh tyaag denge, to phir prayas karenge ki woh hamare saath aayen (The day he resigns as the national president of the INLD, we will try to induct him into our party),” Dushyant had said at a press conference, barely two weeks after launching the JJP. On Wednesday, Chautala did not attend the wedding of his grandson and Dushyant's younger brother Digvijay in Manesar, neither did Chautala's younger son Abhay (Dushyant and Digvijay's uncle), though both had been invited. In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls, they are desperately trying to revive the sinking INLD. While Chautala remained at his farmhouse in Delhi, Abhay is currently on a state-wide tour, in a bid to revive the INLD, of which he is currently the lone MLA in the 90-member Haryana Assembly. Dushyant and his father Ajay had met Chautala personally on February 23 to extend the invite for the wedding functions. While Chautala and Abhay might have wanted to send a message with their absence, Digvijay's star-studded wedding function again underlined the JJP's rising graph at the expense of the INLD. Among those to have attended the wedding festivities are Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, Haryana Chief Minister and BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal, BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya, and several other MPs, MLAs and political stalwarts. President Droupadi Murmu, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president J P Nadda and several Union ministers and MPs are expected to attend the wedding reception, to be held on March 23 in New Delhi. Bollywood celebrities like Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt and Randeep Hooda, and singers like Kailash Kher and Randeep Hooda and Honey Singh will also be at the reception. Randeep Hooda also attended the wedding function. “The presence of political bigwigs cutting across party lines and from across the country show the continuing rise of the JJP,” a close aide of the Chautala family said. The fissures between the families of Abhay and Ajay, meanwhile, show no sign of a detente, amidst their respective political ambitions. Family insiders said Abhay stayed away from Digvijay's wedding after Ajay's side of the family did not attend the wedding functions of Abhay's sons Karan and Arjun. “It is basically a battle of supremacy between Abhay and Dushyant," a family member said." Chautala recently said he would not hesitate to tie up with even the Congress to keep the BJP out of power.
