INLD reorganises national body, retains jailed Om Prakash Chautala as party chief; Ashok Arora to be senior vice-president

Chandigarh: Ahead of the October assembly elections in Haryana, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) reorganised its national body, retaining jailed Om Prakash Chautala, former chief minister as the party president. Ashok Kumar Arora, who had stepped down as the party’s state unit chief after the drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections recently, has been made the senior vice-president, a party release said on Thursday. [caption id=“attachment_802301” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Om Prakash Chautala. AFP.[/caption] “After extensive discussions with the state and district-level leaders and workers, the national body of the INLD has been reorganised. Chaudhary Om Prakash Chautala remains the national president of the party,” the party release stated.  It added that Chautala would be assisted by Ashok Arora as the new senior vice-president of the party. Rajya Sabha MPs Ram Kumar Kashyap, Sadhu Ram Chaudhary, Narayan Prasad Aggarwal, Brigadier OP Chaudhary (retd.), Ashwani Dutta and Bhagi Ram will be vice presidents. RS Choudhry, a retired IAS officer, will continue as the national secretary general with former parliamentarians Charanjit Singh and Inder Singh, former legislator Rampal Majra, Ramesh Garg and Ramesh Dalal joining him as general secretaries. Yudhvir Arya, Chatar Singh, Balwant Singh Myana and Saroj Mor have been appointed as national secretaries.Ram Bhagat Gupta will be the treasurer. Former INLD MPs will too be members of the national body. The party’s parliamentary board will comprise Om Prakash Chautala, Birbal Dass Dhalia, Ved Narang, Anju Singh and Kamal Nagpal. The party had split last year due to a feud in the Chautala family. Om Prakash Chautala’s grandson MP from Hisar in the 16th Lok Sabha, Dushyant Chautala, had formed the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) after the family feud came out in the open. The party had fielded its candidates on all 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state but all of them, including the then Sirsa MP Charanjit Singh, lost badly. The INLD was part of the NDA during 1999-2004 and ran the government in the state in coalition with the BJP with Om Prakash Chautala as the chief minister.