Driven to the wall after three electoral defeats and desertion by ally BJP, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Om Prakash Chautala is headed for a battle of survival in the ensuing Haryana Assembly polls. No wonder then that he has decided that no one from his family, except himself, will enter the poll arena. All others, including his younger son, Abhay Chautala, a former MLA, will focus only on the campaign.

“Who will canvass for the party if everyone from my family fights?” Chautala wondered while talking to The Indian Express here on Tuesday. This is a far cry from the time when three generations of the clan — patriarch Devi Lal, son Chautala and grandson Ajay Chautala — would simultaneously contest Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

The INLD chief, as usual, is set to fight from two constituencies. He has already announced his candidature from Uchana Kalan (in Jind district), traditional constituency of Congress heavy-weight Birender Singh. The other would be from his home district Sirsa. He would obviously need Abhay to stand proxy for him back home while he tours around the state.

Chautala makes no effort to hide his sense of despair over BJP “betrayal”. “We have been ditched by the BJP so often that I have decided that I would never have any alliance with it now. Imagine the BJP asking us to divide the Assembly seats 45:45. I asked them (BJP leaders), you show me as many party candidates at least.”

The former Chief Minister sees a wave of resentment against Congress rule for a variety of reasons — price rise, power crisis, lack of law and order and above all, corruption — but attributes the INLD-BJP defeat in Lok Sabha polls to the persona of L K Advani and his “weak-prime minister poll-theme”. “The Indian psyche is such that the weak spontaneously attracts mass sympathy,” he observed.

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