The BJP Friday appointed Lok Sabha MP Nayab Singh Saini as its Haryana unit president replacing Om Prakash Dhankar as the party prepares for the next year's Lok Sabha and state Assembly polls. Dhankar has been appointed a national secretary of the party. The 53-year-old Saini, belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC), is a first-time MP from Kurukshetra and is considered close to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar. His appointment is being seen as an attempt by the BJP to consolidate non-Jat voters — particularly backward communities — in the caste-centric politics of Haryana where Jat support is largely divided among the Congress, Jannayak Janta Party and the Indian National Lok Dal. The BJP is already in an alliance with the JJP whose leader Dushyant Chautala is the state's deputy chief minister. Dhankar, who was appointed state party chief in July 2020, has already completed his term of three years. However, Saini’s appointment, which comes days after Khattar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is seen as CM tightening the grip on the state party affairs ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and the subsequent Vidhan Sabha polls, the latter due in October 2024. Saini, who has been campaigning in Rajasthan, was also a minister in the previous Khattar government. He was a legislator when he contested the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, the year when BJP won all 10 seats in Haryana. Extending best wishes to Saini for the new assignment, Khattar said, “I am sure the organisation would benefit from his long political and administrative experience and the BJP would set new history in the upcoming polls”. When Dhankar, a Jat, was appointed as BJP state president, it was seen as a balancing act on the part of the saffron party as Khattar, a Punjabi, was already occupying the post of CM. Earlier too, the same principle was opted when Subhash Barala, also a Jat, looked after the assignment of the state party president for over five years while Khattar was occupying the chair of CM. The Congress and the INLD too largely followed the same concept of sharing responsibilities between Jats and non-Jats when handing over assignments of the CM and state party chief while being in power in the state. With Saini's appointment, BJP is looking to consolidate the grip on its core group of voters — the backward communities. Saini's appointment comes at a time when both BJP and JJP have remained non-committal on contesting elections jointly. In recent months, the both have said that they are independently preparing to contest all the 10 Lok Sabha and 90 Assembly seats. In this scenario, Saini has a task at hand to further strengthen his party ahead of the two crucial elections in 2024. A law graduate, Saini was elected to the state Assembly in 2014 from Naraingarh. In 2016, he was inducted into the state cabinet as a minister of state (MOS). The party later fielded him for the Lok Sabha polls from Kurukshetra in 2019. Saini has handled several responsibilities in the party organisation ranging from Ambala district BJP Yuva Morcha president to Ambala district party president and state party general secretary. Meanwhile, critics believe that his appointment as Haryana BJP chief may dent the party's prospects in the neighbouring Rajasthan where the Jat community has a sizeable presence. Rajathan goes to polls on November 25. Shortly before the BJP central leadership announced Saini's appointment, Dhankar was asked by reporters in Chandigarh that his term as state unit chief had come to an end in July and can one expect any change. Replying to this, Dhankar said change is a natural process in a national party and referred to recent appointments of the party's Punjab and Chandigarh unit appointments. “No one is permanent here. This is not a family-based party. It is a national party in which change from booth unit in-charge to national president is a natural process,” Dhankar, who is also a former Haryana minister, said. Khattar also congratulated Dhankar on his new responsibility saying “party workers across the country will benefit” from his organisational experience.
