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Journalism of Courage
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi singled out Manohar Lal Khattar for praise at the inauguration of the prestigious Dwarka Expressway project, he was removed as the Chief Minister of Haryana by the BJP, which replaced him with the party’s Kurukshetra MP and its state unit chief, Nayab Singh Saini. Khattar is learnt to have proposed Saini’s name as CM during the BJP Legislature Party meeting on Tuesday.
With the Lok Sabha polls near and the Haryana Assembly elections scheduled for the end of the year, the BJP appears to have gone in for the 54-year-old OBC leader, in place of Khattar, who has been the CM since 2014, so as to consolidate the non-Jat and OBC votes across the state. It is also an attempt to counter anti-incumbency against Khattar.
In the caste-centric politics of Haryana, the Jat support is largely divided among the Congress, Jannayak Janata Party (which was dumped by the BJP on Monday) and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). Even the appointment of Khattar, a Punjabi, was seen as a bid by the BJP to break the Jat stranglehold on the state.
Crucially, Saini is considered a close confidant of Khattar, with their relationship going back to their RSS days.
Belonging to Mizapur Majra village in Ambala, Saini did his education from B R Ambedkar Bihar University in Muzaffarpur and Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Meerut, where he attained a law degree.
He contested his first election in 2009 from the Naraingarh Assembly constituency, but lost to the Congress’s Ram Kishan Gurjar. In 2014, the year the BJP came to power in Haryana and Khattar became the CM for the first time, Saini won and was inducted as a Cabinet minister.
In 2019, the party fielded Saini from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat, where he defeated Congress candidate Nirmal Singh by more than 3.8 lakh votes. That year, the BJP won all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana.
In October 2023, the BJP appointed Saini as its Haryana unit president, replacing Om Prakash Dhankar, who was moved as national secretary of the party. Saini’s appointment was then too seen as a bid to consolidate OBC votes, aligning with the BJP’s OBC push across the country.
The uncertainty regarding the BJP-JJP plans for the Lok Sabha elections has persisted under Saini’s tenure as state chief.
Before becoming the state chief, Saini handled other responsibilities in the party organisation, ranging from being Ambala district BJP Yuva Morcha president to Ambala district president and state general secretary.
