After the Indian National Lok Dal faced a humiliating defeat in Lok Sabha elections, the party chief Om Prakash Chautala on Tuesday asked the workers to not lose hope and think of ways to rebuild the party.
Chautala, who is serving a 10-year jail sentence in connection with the teachers recruitment scam in Haryana, was released on furlough on Tuesday and issued a statement here.
While reaching out to the party workers, the former Chief Minister said that he emphathises with them over the sorry state of affairs of the INLD, which lost on all 10 Lok Sabha seats in elections.
Asking them to not lose hope, the INLD chief said that the party workers should think of the ways and means of coming out of this crisis and rebuild the party.
Chautala said he will be meeting all the workers, including those who might have left the party for some reason.
He also reminded the INLD workers that they represented the farming community, rural and working class and cannot afford to allow the unity of these classes to be threatened.
“It will be my effort to have a heart-to-heart talk with as many party workers as possible and listen to their grievances, suggestions and then chalk out a programme for rebuilding the party,†he added in his statement.
After a vertical split in the party last year, following feud in the Chautala family, INLD's political graph in Haryana has further nosedived.
In general elections 2019, the party not only failed to retain the two seats it had won in 2014 parliamentary polls but its candidates on 10 Lok Sabha seats could not even save their security deposits.
Arjun Chautala, son of INLD secretary general Abhay Chautala and grandson of INLD chief Om Parkash Chautala, faced a humiliating defeat, finishing at fifth place in Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat. INLD’s outgoing MP from Sirsa, Charanjit Singh Rori finished at third place and got just 6.43 percent votes.
Not only this, the party’s vote share declined to dismal 1.89 percent (240258 votes) in 2019 from its vote share of 24.4 per cent in 2014.
The INLD, founded by late Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal has been out of power in Haryana for over 14 years now.
Taking responsibility of party’s embarrassing defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, the INLD state chief Ashok Arora had resigned from his post last week. However, his resignation was not accepted by the party chief OP Chautala.
