Eyeing Haryana CM post, Union MoS Rao Inderjit Singh steps up caste, regional play

A five-time MP and four-time MLA, Singh has been projecting himself as a key face of South Haryana politics, maintaining at his rallies that “South Haryana must regain its lost political rights”.

A former Congress heavyweight from the region, Singh, 72, had switched to the BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He is a descendant of Rao Tula Ram, the 19th century king of the Ahirwal region that comprises Rewari, Mahendragarh, Gurgaon and parts of Bhiwani, Dadri, Nuh and Jhajjar in Haryana and Alwar in Rajasthan. His father Rao Birender Singh had served as Haryana’s second CM in 1967.

Addressing a rally in Pataudi in June this year, Singh said that with the objective of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas”, the BJP government has speeded up the development of long-neglected South Haryana. However, he also flagged alleged political discrimination against the region, charging that its people have always been taken for a ride.

Even during his stint in the Congress, Singh had accused the party’s then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda of allegedly developing his own constituency Rohtak at the cost of the rest of Haryana.

Singh, who belongs to the Yadav community, has also sought to mobilise his support base over his Ahir identity. He along with his daughter Aarti Rao have strongly supported the need for an Ahir regiment in the army, which has been a long-standing demand of the community in South Haryana’s Ahirwal region involving Gurgaon, Rewari and Mahendragarh. The Yaduvanshi Ahir community has a sizeable presence in the region.

Born in Rampura, Singh graduated from Delhi University’s Hindu College and went on to get a Law degree before joining politics at the age of 26. He made his Assembly poll debut from Rewari’s Jatusana on the ticket of the Vishal Haryana Party founded by his father Rao Birender, which merged with the Congress in 1978.

Singh is currently the Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Planning and Statistics and Programme Implementation as well as MoS for Corporate Affairs in the Narendra Modi ministry.

In the previous Congress-led UPA government, Singh had served as the MoS for External Affairs and later as the MoS for Defence.

Singh’s camp has been projecting his chief ministerial candidature, claiming that he never got his dues in the BJP in sync with his contribution to the party’s performance in successive polls in Haryana since 2014.

It has been an open secret in the state political circles that Singh has been eyeing the CM’s post. In a recent interview with a TV channel, he let the cat out of the bag, saying “There is no doubt that in our region (South Haryana) people have made and broken chief ministers. In 2014, if our people had not gotten together, the BJP would not have come to power. Our people protested that it was wrong to stand with Khattar, but no one listened and made him the CM. I harboured the ambition to become the CM and people shared these sentiments. When the government was formed, people felt that their leader was not chosen, but it was the party’s decision, and we had to follow it.”

Expressing his disappointment, Singh also said, “I had sought a ticket for Aarti from Rewari (Assembly seat) twice in 2014 and 2019 but BJP denied it both times.”

Aarti has been playing an active role in highlighting alleged denial of rights to South Haryana in terms of its political representation in the state government despite accounting for a major chunk of the Assembly seats. Ahead of the 2024 polls, she has also been leading the campaign to push for Singh’s chief ministerial claim.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, out of the state’s total 90 seats the BJP won 40 as against the Congress’s 31 seats. Of South Haryana’s 22 seats, however, the BJP bagged 14 seats as compared to the Congress’s 5.

Congress leader and ex-minister Capt Ajay Yadav, a known rival of Singh, castigates him for “still thinking that he is a ruler rather than a leader”. “Singh’s clamour for South Haryana and its political rights is to pin the blame on others for his faults,” Yadav charged. Despite Singh having been an MLA and MP multiple times since 1971, why is the area still backward,” he asked.

“And where are the projects Singh had announced? Gurgaon does not have a proper civil hospital or a university. Rewari AIIMS was announced a long time ago, but it is still nowhere close to reality. He blamed Hooda during his tenure and now Khattar, for his own inefficiency,” Yadav said.

Regarding the BJP’s denial of ticket to Aarti, Yadav said Singh’s son Chiranjeev Rao Yadav, the Rewari MLA, rose through ranks because of his plunge into politics at a young age. “Aarti was not part of RSS, she does not work on the ground, then how can anyone expect BJP to hand her a ticket to her,” he said.

Observers say that one of the hurdles in Singh’s CM aspiration is the point that he does not have a Sangh background. They also point to the “limitation of his regional and caste politics”, adding that the Ahir community makes up less than 10% of the state’s population and plays a dominant role in just about a dozen constituencies.

Yadav, who was trounced by Singh in Gurgaon in the 2019 Lok Sabha election by a huge margin, said the BJP’s decision to drop the MoS from its national executive last year signalled that the party was marginalising him.