© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Senior Haryana BJP leader and former home minister, Anil Vij, 61, has admirers across the state, cutting across communities and party affiliations. One can find the six-time MLA’s supporters in villages, at bus stands and in government-run buses.
Observers say the “prompt manner” in which Vij dealt with the complaints of the common people as the home minister in the previous Manohar Lal Khattar government built his public image as an “administrator who wants prompt results”.
It is in this context that Vij’s exclusion from the new BJP Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has left many surprised. State BJP chief Saini replaced Khattar as the CM just weeks before the Lok Sabha polls.
BJP sources said by dropping Vij from the Saini Cabinet, the party leadership has sought to send out a clear signal that the “party is supreme”.
When the BJP won a majority in the 90-member Haryana Assembly in 2014 for the first time, Vij was seen as a front- runner for the chief ministerial position. However, the party picked first-time MLA Khattar for the job.
In the 2019 polls too, Vij was seen as a major claimant to the CM’s post. But Khattar again beat Vij in the race, with the latter allotted key portfolios like home and health.
On March 12 this year, when the BJP leadership, after suddenly snapping the party’s alliance with then deputy CM Dushyant Chautala’s JJP and effected a change of guard, it again ignored Vij, bringing in OBC leader Saini, a sitting MP from Kurukshetra, to helm the government.
A visibly upset Vij left midway the BJP Legislature Party meeting, which elected Saini as its new leader, and did not attend his swearing-in ceremony held later in the day.
Vij said he was also not consulted for the Cabinet expansion undertaken on March 19, when Saini inducted eight ministers, taking the ministry strength up to 14 — the maximum allowed for the state.
When asked about Khattar’s reconciliatory remarks about his resentment, Vij said: “Pata nahi unka…aankh kahan hoti hai, nishana kahan hota hai (I don’t know about him…looking at one place and aiming at another).”
A section of the BJP and its affiliates views Vij’s response as “over-reaction”, especially in light of the party high command’s style of functioning in recent years in which it has promoted new and low-profile faces.
A senior Saini Cabinet member and Independent MLA Ranjit Singh Chautala, who was also a minister in the Khattar Cabinet, says he disagrees with Vij’s response by leaving the party meeting midway as it “affects the image of the party”.
“It doesn’t give a good message. We should accept the guidelines of the party supreme command,” Chautala said while speaking to The Indian Express.
He said Vij should have “welcomed” the BJP leadership’s decision as “the party has already given him a lot”. He also gives the examples of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where new faces were made the CMs in place of the party veterans.
“BJP is a very big party. When decisions are taken by the party, individual considerations are not looked into. The organisation and discipline are most important for the BJP,” said Chautala, who is himself a BJP ticket aspirant for the upcoming polls.
However, another BJP section also believes that Vij was not treated well by the party, especially given his seniority.
Vij has admirers even in the principal Opposition Congress’s camp. Congress MLA Shamsher Gogi said the BJP did not do the “right thing” by axing him from the ministry. Gogi said: “If such a treatment can be given to Vij, then no place would be left for the honest leaders in politics. Vij is like a Baba (saint). The BJP did wrong to him. No one can raise questions on his honesty.”
On his part, CM Saini said last week that Vij has been a “respected leader” and that they have been getting guidance from him regularly.
State BJP chief spokesperson Sanjay Sharma says that apart from Vij, two other senior ministers – Kamlesh Dhanda and Om Prakash Yadav – have also been dropped to pave the way for new faces. According to Sharma, the party has kept in mind the caste and regional equations while expanding the Cabinet.
As many as eight Cabinet members including the CM are new faces. Seven out of eight ministers, who were inducted on March 19, are two-term MLAs.
Keen to woo non-Jat voters, the BJP has inducted one more minister from Baniya community (Aseem Goel) while giving representation to a Rajput face (Sanjay Singh) too.
BJP sources say the optics would not have been positive if Khattar had been replaced with Vij because both belong to the same community (Punjabi). Punjabis are not a dominant community in Haryana, accounting for less than 10% of the state’s population.
On his part, Vij has continued to meet his friends and supporters at a tea point in Ambala in the morning, which he says he has been doing for over 35 years.
Refusing to comment on his exclusion from the Saini Cabinet, Vij said he was committed to work harder to ensure the victory of the BJP candidates in the Lok Sabha polls so that “Modi ji gets 400 seats”.
Apart from Vij, the Cabinet expansion has also disappointed the supporters of two senior BJP leaders in the state – Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh and Kuldeep Bishnoi, the son of ex-CM late Bhajan Lal. One of Rao’s aides, Om Prakash Yadav has been dropped from the ministry which now has a lone representative from his camp, Banwari Lal.
Bishnoi’s supporters were also hoping for a ministerial berth for his son Bhavya, but to no avail. Bishnoi, who was seen as a CM contender in the Congress, switched to the BJP in August 2022 following his differences with Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
