Former V-P Dhankhar shifts to INLD leader Abhay Chautala’s farmhouse in South Delhi

Former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar shifted from his official residence to a private farmhouse in the Chhatarpur area of South Delhi on Monday evening, six weeks after he resigned from his post, according to officials.

The farmhouse in the Gadaipur area of Chhatarpur belongs to INLD leader Abhay Chautala.

An official said that Dhankhar will stay in the private farmhouse as an interim arrangement till he is allocated a Type-8 official residence, which he is entitled to as a former vice-president.

The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, however, has not yet received any formal request from Dhankhar for allotment of a government bungalow, another official said.

Abhay Chautala, the son of ex-Haryana chief minister OP Chautala, confirmed that the former vice-president has moved into the farmhouse in Chhatarpur. “We have old family ties with him. He is like a family member. I don't have to offer him to stay in our house, it is his own house,” the INLD leader said.

Dhankhar shared close ties with former deputy prime minister Devi Lal and his son, the ex-chief minister of Haryana Om Prakash Chautala. Devi Lal died in 2001, while OP Chautala passed away in December last year.

The former vice-president had attended OP Chautala’s last rites in the Khera village of Sirsa district.

Highlighting the close ties, the former vice-president shares with the Chautala family, Abhay Chautala said, “We keep talking to each other at regular intervals. During one such interaction, this thing (house shifting) came up, and I told him that till his own house gets ready, it (Chhatarpur farmhouse) was also his own house and he need not go anywhere else.”

Dhankhar, at events in Sirsa in March, said that he was mentored in politics by Devi Lal and spoke at length about the former deputy prime minister’s various initiatives for the farming community.

Abhay Singh Chautala, who is the president of Devi Lal Memorial Trust, and INLD MLA Arjun Chautala, who is chairman of JCD Vidyapeeth, were among those present at the events.

“I still remember the day when I first met Chaudhary Devi Lal ji in Jaipur... When he told me that I have to contest elections, I said that I am a pleader (lawyer). He told me to remove the ‘P’ and become a leader,” he had recalled.

“My political education, political initiation and political philosophy have come from Chaudhary Devi Lal,” said Dhankhar, a law graduate who even practised as an advocate in his early career.

Dhankhar resigned from his post on July 21, the first day of the Monsoon session, citing health reasons, and has stayed away from the public eye since then. He has been staying at the Vice President’s Enclave near Parliament House till now.

Sources close to Dhankhar said he was spending time with his family, playing table tennis and practising yoga.

An election to pick his successor is scheduled to take place on September 9.

In the vice-presidential election, NDA pick CP Radhakrishnan, the governor of Maharashtra, is pitted against opposition nominee B Sudershan Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge.

Dhankhar’s term as the vice-president was to end on August 10, 2027.