Nayab Singh Saini sworn in as Haryana's new chief minister
On a day of fast-paced political developments in Haryana, the BJP on Tuesday named OBC leader Nayab Singh Saini as Haryana's new chief minister, hours after the resignation of Manohar Lal Khattar from the post along with his cabinet ministers. Saini, 54, is seen to be close to Khattar.
On a day of fast-paced political developments in Haryana, the BJP on Tuesday named OBC leader Nayab Singh Saini as Haryana's new chief minister, hours after the resignation of Manohar Lal Khattar from the post along with his cabinet ministers. Saini, 54, is seen to be close to Khattar.
A low-profile OBC leader, Saini rose through the ranks in the party and was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP's legislature group at a meeting held here on Tuesday before assuming the office of the chief minister.
The surprise development in Chandigarh comes just weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Khattar's second term as chief minister was also to end in October when the assembly polls are due.
Khattar and all 13 other members of the BJP-led council of ministers submitted their resignations to the Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya apparently at the direction of the BJP's central leadership.
Shortly after this, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs headed to a meeting of the party's legislature group, which unanimously picked Saini as its leader. Saini, who is the MP from Kurukshetra, was appointed the president of the BJP's Haryana unit only in October.
The BJP had replaced Om Prakash Dhankar with Saini as the state party chief in October, a move then seen as an attempt to strengthen its hold on the OBC community. The vote of the Jats, the most populous community in the state, is seen to be divided among the Congress, the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), and the Indian National Lok Dal.
The switch in Haryana came amid speculation that ruling BJP-JJP coalition was coming apart. JJP leader Dushyant Chautala was the deputy chief minister and there were two other members of his party in the outgoing Khattar-led government. The BJP, which won all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana by large margins in 2019, appeared keen to fight the upcoming parliamentary polls on its own.
Saini was a minister in the first Khattar cabinet. He was an MLA when he fought the Lok Sabha polls in 2019.
At present, the BJP has 41 MLAs in the 90-member House while the JJP has 10. The ruling combine also enjoyed the support of six of the seven independents. The party appears to be comfortably placed in Haryana even without the JJP support. The main opposition Congress has 30 MLAs and the Indian National Lok Dal and Haryana Lokhit Party have one seat each.
The announcement to pick Saini as Haryana's next chief minister was sudden and unexpected, but had similarities of element of surprise which the BJP is known for when it had named Manohar Lal Khattar to the post in 2014.
Considered as a confidant of Manohar Lal Khattar (69), Saini will be replacing the BJP strongman whose second term as CM was going to end in October. The surprise move by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party came weeks before Lok Sabha polls are to be held. Haryana assembly polls are due in October.
The move to pick Saini as the chief minister is also being seen as a counter to the anti-incumbency perception against the Khattar dispensation. The population of the Saini community is around eight per cent in Haryana. The community wields influence in many of Haryana's northern districts, including Ambala, Kurukshetra and Hisar besides in few other districts.
In 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party had formed its government for the first time on its own strength in Haryana, the party had picked Khattar, a first-time MLA from Karnal, as the chief minister. At that time, Khattar was picked up ignoring senior leaders like Ram Bilas Sharma, Anil Vij, Capt Abhimanyu and O P Dhankar. In the events which unfolded on Tuesday, Saini was picked to succeed Khattar in a similar fashion.
