3rd generation of Bansi Lal dynasty at forefront after Kiran Choudhry hints at passing on baton
Gurugram: At an event in Haryana’s Tosham Tuesday, marking the 21st death anniversary of her husband Surender Singh, Rajya Sabha MP Kiran Choudhry said something the people of this dust-blown town in Bhiwani district had perhaps been waiting to hear for a while.
Referring to her daughter Shruti, who is the MLA from Tosham and a minister in the government of CM Nayab Saini, Kiran said: “Now that Shruti has arrived, I appeal to the people to support Shruti as they supported other family members and me.”
Saini was the chief guest at the event.
Speaking at the event, Kiran Choudhry added that she now intends to devote her time to the cancer patients’ foundation that her husband Surender Singh was passionate about.
Kiran’s words landed quietly, but their meaning was clear enough. At 70, with her Rajya Sabha term ending on 9 April, and the BJP having chosen not to send her back to the Upper House—fielding former MP Sanjay Bhatia in her place—Kiran was, for all practical purposes, passing the baton on to her daughter.
When reached over phone by ThePrint, she was careful not to use the word “retirement”.
“There is never a retirement in public life,” she said. “I will always be there among my people.”
Closely intertwined with her assertions is the history of Tosham assembly constituency, a stronghold of the family of Bansi Lal, three-time chief minister of Haryana—and Kiran’s father-in-law.
Bansi Lal—the man credited with transforming Haryana from an agricultural backwater into an industrialised state, earning him the title of ‘architect of modern Haryana’—first won the Tosham assembly seat in 1967, a year after the state was carved out of Punjab.
He won it again in 1972, then in a by-election in 1986, and again in 1991 and 1996. In between, he became Haryana chief minister in May 1968, less than two years into the state’s existence, and remained a dominant force in Haryana politics for three decades, serving as defence minister under Indira Gandhi, as railways minister under Rajiv Gandhi, and as chief minister in three separate tenures.
His son Surender Singh inherited the seat, winning it in 1977, 1982 and 2005. When Surender Singh died in a chopper crash on 31 March, 2005, his wife Kiran, former Deputy Speaker of the Delhi Assembly, shifted base to Haryana and won the ensuing by-election. She held the seat in 2009, 2014 and 2019. Now her daughter Shruti holds it.
In nearly six decades, the Tosham seat has gone outside the Bansi Lal family only twice, both times to Dharambir Singh, who defeated Bansi Lal in 1987 and Surender Singh in 2000.
Dharambir Singh is now a BJP MP from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh parliamentary seat, which adds a layer of irony to the current political arrangement, where both the Choudhry women and their old adversary are now in the same party.
Also Read: In Kiran Choudhry’s Rajya Sabha nomination, a BJP bid to assuage voters in Haryana’s Jat heartland
The Bhiwani problem
If Tosham has been the family’s heartland, the Bhiwani Lok Sabha seat, redesignated Bhiwani-Mahendragarh after the 2009 delimitation, was its crown jewel. But it is here that the dynasty’s reach has visibly contracted.
Bansi Lal won the seat in 1980, 1984 and 1989, after losing it in 1977 in the post-Emergency wave. In a bye-election held in 1987, Ram Narayan Singh of the Lok Dal won this seat. Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party candidate then held it in 1991, and Surender Singh won it in 1996 and 1998. But in 1999, the seat went to Ajay Chautala of the Indian National Lok Dal. In 2004, Kuldeep Bishnoi of the Congress took it.
Shruti won it in 2009, but lost to Dharambir Singh of the BJP in 2014. She lost it again to him in 2019. In 2024, Congress denied her the ticket altogether, a slight that proved to be the final rupture between the family and the party with which they had spent a significant part of their political lives. Both Kiran and Shruti crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2024 Haryana assembly elections.
The family has now gone long without winning the parliamentary seat, and won it only once in the last 28 years.
The challenge to Bansi Lal’s legacy does not, however, come only from outside the family.
Anirudh Choudhry, son of Ranbir Mahindra, Bansi Lal’s elder son, contested the Tosham seat as a Congress candidate against Shruti in 2024, staking his own claim to the family’s founding inheritance. The two branches of the family now sit in opposing camps. Anirudh, a former treasurer of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, remains with the Congress.
Shruti is with the BJP and a minister in the state government led by the party.
Third generation takes charge
Jyoti Mishra, an assistant professor of political science at Amity University, Mohali, and former researcher at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), told ThePrint that Kiran’s political journey has been an unlikely one.
“She came to Haryana not by design but by grief, and built her own standing in a state that was not her original constituency. She served as a cabinet minister under (Congress leader) Bhupinder Singh Hooda, led the Congress Legislative Party, and held Tosham through four consecutive elections against an often hostile political environment,” she said.
According to Mishra, at Tuesday’s rally, Kiran evoked her daughter’s childhood, holding Bansi Lal’s finger as she walked onto the stage, accompanying her father on campaign trails, going door to door in Tosham and in Delhi. It was a careful and deliberate framing of Shruti not as a newcomer but as someone who has been absorbing this world since she could walk, Mishra explained.
“Whether the third generation can hold what the first built, and reclaim what has since slipped away, is the question that will define this family’s political story in the years ahead,” she added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: Why BJP Haryana dropped Bansi Lal’s kin, Kiran & Shruti Choudhry, from its Emergency ‘Black Day’ rallies
