Devi Lal's great-grandson enters electoral fray

Chandigarh, March 18 (IANS) Former deputy prime minister Devi Lal's great-grandson, Dushyant Chautala, Tuesday entered full-time politics, filing his nomination as the INLD candidate for the Hisar Lok Sabha seat.

Dushyant, who turned 26 recently and became eligible for the Lok Sabha electoral fray, is the son of Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Ajay Chautala and grandson of INLD president and former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala.

Ajay Chautala and Om Prakash Chautala are serving prison term in Delhi's Tihar jail after they were convicted by a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Delhi January last year in the JBT teachers' recruitment scam.

Dushyant was accompanied by his uncle Abhay Chautala and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal when he went to file his nomination papers in Hisar town, 235 km from here.

Addressing a rally after filing his nomination papers, Dushyant said that the Congress needed to be wiped out as it had brought misery to the country. He alleged that his grand-father and father were in prison due to the manipulations done by Congress leaders.

The Hisar seat will witness an interesting contest now with INLD's Dushyant in the fray. He will contest against sitting Hisar MP and Haryana Janhit Congress president Kuldeep Bishnoi, the son of former chief minister Bhajan Lal.

Other main candidates in the fray are former Haryana finance minister Sampat Singh of the Congress and former IAS officer Y.S. Khayalia of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Sampat Singh was earlier a senior leader of the INLD for over three decades before he switched over to the Congress in 2009.

Elections to 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana are to be held April 10.

Dushyant's father Ajay Chautala had lost to Bishnoi in the by-election to the Hisar Lok Sabha seat October 2011 by a margin of just over 6,300 votes. The Congress candidate finished third in the bypoll and even lost his security deposit.