Bhajan Lal

In 1977 elections he contested under a Janata Party ticket and won the elections. Under the new Janata Party government of Devi Lal, 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 thereby toppling the Janata Party government.[4]

Following his defection to the Congress he became the Chief Minister of Haryana with a razor thin majority. In 1980 following the victory of Indira Gandhi 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 Janata Party 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, which he used to his advantage by filing cases against he rivals to pressure them into withdrawing or joining him.[3] This horse trading during his first term had led to the Hindustan Times calling him the "master of horse-trading".[5]

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.[3] He was re-elected on May 23, 1982 and served until July 1986.

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.[6]

In 1986 following the end of his tenure as Chief Minister, he was made a Rajya Sabha 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 after winning in the constituency of Faridabad.[4][7]

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.[4]

The victory of the Indian National Congress 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.[8] 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 from the Indian National Congress, for criticizing the party's central leaders.[9]

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".[10] He fought from Hissar and defeated Sampat Singh, INLD leader by 6983 votes, Jai parkash of Congress came at third position in a high-profile battle.[11]