Bhajanlal Bishnoi (6 October 1930 – 3 June 2011) was a politician and three-time

chief minister A chief minister is an elected or appointed head of government of – in most instances – a sub-national entity, for instance an administrative subdivision or federal constituent entity. Examples include a state (and sometimes a union terri ...

of the

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n state of

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land ar ...

. He became the Chief Minister for the first time in 1979, was re-elected in 1982, and became the chief minister for the third time by winning the elections in 1991. He also served as the

Minister of Agriculture An agriculture ministry (also called an) agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister f ...

and the Minister of Environment and Forests in the Rajiv Gandhi government.

Early life

Bhajan Lal Bishnoi was born in a

Bishnoi Bishnoi (also known as Vishnoi) is a community found in the Western Thar Desert and northern states of India. They follow a set of 29 principles/commandments given by Guru Jambheshwar (also known as Guru Jambhoji, Guru Jambha Ji) (1451-1536). ...

Jat family on 6 October 1930 in the Koranwali village of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

Bahawalpur Bahawalpur () is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. With inhabitants as of 2017, it is Pakistan's 11th most populous city. Founded in 1748, Bahawalpur was the capital of the former princely state of Bahawalpur, ruled by the Abbasi fa ...

princely state, which is now in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

.He received his formal education in

Bahawalnagar Bahawalnagar ( Punjabi, ur, ), is the capital city of Bahawalnagar District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The city of Bahawalnagar is the headquarter of the district and tehsil as well.

. Lal lived under difficult circumstances and had to sell his wares on a cycle to make a living. He married Jasma Devi, with whom he had two sons - Chander Mohan Bishnoi and Kuldip Bishnoi and a daughter, Roshni. Bhajan Lal moved to Adampur after the Partition. At the age of 17 he began buying and selling goods at his village market, he soon started a shop in partnership with Pokhar Mal who was a local trader. Both of them worked as commission agents (intermediaries between the fanner and the wholesaler), this work got him into trouble with the local police. He initially joined politics to protect himself from the police. The police had 12 criminal cases and charges against him, all of which were dropped once he became a MLA.

Political career

Lal started his political career by becoming a village ''

sarpanch A sarpanch ( IAST: ''Sarpañch'' Hindi: ''सरपंच'') or Gram Pradhan or Mukhiya is a decision-maker, elected by the village-level constitutional body of local self-government called the Gram Sabha (village government) in India. The Sarp ...

'' and later the chairman of the

panchayat samiti Panchayat samiti is a rural local government (panchayat) body at the intermediate tehsil (taluka/mandal) level in India. It works for the villages of the tehsil that together are called a development block. It has been said to be the "panchayat ...

of Hisar. He joined the Congress Party, and became the president of the Congress Mandal in the region. He was elected to the Haryana Assembly for the first time in 1968 after winning the mid-term polls in Adampur. He retained this seat for the remainder of his political career except in 1987 when his wife won the seat.

Janata Party

In 1977 elections he contested under a

Janata Party The Janata Party ( JP, lit. ''People's Party'') was a political party that was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian Nati ...

ticket and won the elections. Under the new Janata Party government of

Devi Lal Chaudhary Devi Lal (born Devi Dayal; 25 September 1915 – 6 April 2001) was an Indian statesman who served as 6th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 1989 to 1991 in the governments of V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar. Also popularly known as ...

, Bhajan Lal was given a number of ministries including the ministry of dairy development and animal husbandry, the ministry of labour and employment, and the forests ministry. However in 1979 he defected to the Congress along with a group of

MLAs The Max Launch Abort System (MLAS) was a proposed alternative to the Maxime Faget-invented "tractor" launch escape system (LES) that was planned for use by NASA for its Orion (spacecraft), Orion spacecraft in the event an Ares I malfunction du ...

thereby toppling the Janata Party government.

First and Second Terms as Chief Minister

Following his defection to the Congress he became the

Chief Minister of Haryana The Chief Minister of Haryana is the chief executive of the Indian state of Haryana. As per the Constitution of India, the governor is a state's ''de jure'' head, but ''de facto'' executive authority rests with the chief minister. Following elect ...

with a razor thin majority. In 1980 following the victory of

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...

led Congress (I) in the general elections, many Janata Party leaders began to defect, by then he was able to get as many as 40 Janata Party MLAs into the Congress and secured a strong majority of 50 MLAs in an assembly of 90 MLAs. He had achieved this despite his rival Devi Lal resorting to guarding his 42

MLAs in a farmhouse with guards armed with submachine guns. He offered the defecting MLAs land, money, positions in state corporations and boards, and cabinet positions to this end he had expanded the number of cabinet ministries to 26 which made every second congress MLA a minister. He also held control over the state's

Criminal Investigation Department The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch (though officers of b ...

, which he used to his advantage by filing cases against he rivals to pressure them into withdrawing or joining him. This horse trading during his first term had led to the

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Lyall ...

calling him the "master of horse-trading". Bhajan Lal's record on governance and the economy however was seen as poor at the time with state corporations and boards seeing sharp declines in their surpluses and no addition of new electricity generation capacity in the state during his initial years of rule between 1979-1982. He was re-elected on May 23, 1982 and served until July 1986.

1987 Elections

Although he did not lead the party into the 1987 elections, the electoral rout of the Congress in that elections resulted in him being slowly sidelined in the party in favour of newer leaders like Bhupinder Hooda.

Union Minister and National Politics

In 1986 following the end of his tenure as Chief Minister, he was made a

Rajya Sabha The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally the Council of States, is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of India. , it has a maximum membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using si ...

MP, and was appointed as the Union Minister of Environment and Forests under the Rajiv Gandhi government. In 1988 he was made the Union Minister of Agriculture. In 1989 he was elected to the

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...

after winning in the constituency of

Faridabad Faridabad is the most populous city in the Indian state of Haryana and a part of Delhi National Capital Region. It is one of the major satellite cities around Delhi and is located 284 kilometres south of the state capital Chandigarh. The ri ...

Third Term as Chief Minister

He resigned from the Lok Sabha and contested the Haryana Assembly elections held in 1991 from Adampur, Congress won the elections and he was made the chief minister for the third time. However, in the 1996 elections the Congress suffered a major defeat, and Bhajan Lal never became a chief minister following that.

Leaving the Congress

The victory of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

in Haryana's 2005 elections caused a major rift in its state unit, as it opted to make Bhupinder Hooda, a Jat, the Chief Minister instead of Lal. In 2007, Lal officially announced he would form a new party, called the Haryana Janhit Congress. The key event that brought this about was the suspension of his son

Kuldeep Bishnoi Kuldeep Singh' is a given name. Notable people with the name include: * Kuldeep Bishnoi (born 1968), Indian Member of Parliament * Kuldeep Kumar (born 1950), Indian politician *Kuldeep Manak (1951–2011), Indian Punjabi singer * Kuldeep Pawar (194 ...

from the Indian National Congress, for criticizing the party's central leaders.

2009 Lok Sabha Elections

He fought the 2009 Lok Sabha election despite being 79 years old at the time, stating that he was still "young enough to win elections". He fought from Hissar and defeated

Sampat Singh Sampat Singh (born 20 April 1949) is a former Finance Minister of Haryana, India. As a Janata Party candidate, he was elected to the Haryana Vidhan Sabha, Legislative Assembly from the Bhattu Kalan (Vidhan Sabha constituency), Bhattu Kalan con ...

INLD Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) is a political party in India, in the state of Haryana. INLD was founded in October 1996 as Haryana Lok Dal (Rashtriya) by Choudhary Devi Lal, who served as Deputy Prime Minister of India in the V.P. Singh's Cabin ...

leader by 6983 votes,

Jai parkash Jai Parkash (born 2 December 1954) is an Indian politician. He represented the Hissar constituency of Haryana and is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) political party. He served as Deputy Minister in Ministry of Petroleum and Che ...

of Congress came at third position in a high-profile battle.

Death

Bhajan Lal died on 3 June 2011 in Hisar following a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lal, Bhajan People from Panchkula Chief Ministers of Haryana India MPs 2009–2014 1930 births 2011 deaths India MPs 1989–1991 India MPs 1998–1999 People from Bahawalpur District Lok Sabha members from Haryana Chief ministers from Indian National Congress Agriculture Ministers of India Members of the Cabinet of India Chief ministers from Janata Party Haryana MLAs 1972–1977 Haryana MLAs 1977–1982 Haryana MLAs 1982–1987 Haryana MLAs 1987–1991 Haryana MLAs 1991–1996 Haryana MLAs 1996–2000 Haryana MLAs 2000–2005 Haryana Janhit Congress politicians Indian National Congress politicians Politicians from Faridabad