A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party snapped ties with Indian National Lok Dal, the INLD president and former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala said on Tuesday that his party was now no longer part of the saffron party led National Democratic Alliance.
"We have come out of NDA and are no longer part of it," Chautala told mediapersons and charged the BJP with ditching them "again and again" and vowed to not to be part of the alliance again. He said that keeping the Congress party at bay has been his main aim so he had "compromised" by being part of the BJP many times in the past. "In 1977, BJP had ditched (Chautala's father and former Deputy Prime Minister) Chaudhary Devi Lal, yet we formed alliance in 1982 and 1987 with them. In 1996, the BJP formed alliance with the Haryana Vikas Party and ditched that party also. Yet INLD helped (former Prime Minister) Atal Bihari Vajpayee to become Prime Minister in 1998 by giving unconditional support of our four MPs," he said. He said in 2004, despite INLD's consistant and unconditional support of five Lok Sabha MPs to the BJP government, "BJP left us again and declared candidates for the Lok Sabha elections without consulting the INLD". "Despite our previous bad experiences, INLD again allied with BJP in 2008 but they have shown their true colours again," he said referring to the BJP's announcement in Chandigarh on Monday, snapping ties with the INLD.
With BJP maintaining that INLD was sparing very few seats for them to contest the upcoming Haryana Assembly polls, Chautala disclosed that BJP was asking for 45 seats. "We asked them to sit and decide (the seat sharing issue)on the basis on winnablity, but they were adamant (asking for half the total seats) and unilaterally announced to break away the alliance," the INLD chief said. Replying to a query, Chautala declared that INLD would contest on all the 90 seats independently.
He said that INLD would not enter into any alliance with any other party for the upcoming polls. "However the post poll alliance is possible," he added. To a question on who all would contest the upcoming polls from his family, Chautala disclosed that only he would contest from the family. While his elder son, Ajay Chautala is a Rajya Sabha MP, his younger son Abhay Chautala is a former MLA. "INLD will soon announce its manifesto," he said in response to a question.
Meanwhile, reiterating INLD's demand to declare the state as drought-hit, Chautala criticized the state government for not declaring the state as drought hit despite much below normal monsoon rains this year. "Despite the drought and record low rainfall no relief has been given to the people, especially the farmers," he said and criticised the Congress government in the State and at the Centre for having allegedly failed to check rising prices. "The people of Haryana are highly annoyed with the Congress party for its ill governance and total collapse of law and order in the state," he said. The Congress government has failed on all fronts and could not fulfill any of its tall pre-poll promises like bringing SYL water to the state, jobs to one member of every family and 24 hour power supply to all, he alleged. The INLD chief also criticized the alleged misuse of public money to highlight the "personal political image of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda".