Amitabh Shukla | Chandigarh
Sixty-year old Manohar Lal
Khattar, a bachelor, will be the first BJP Chief Minister of Haryana. Specially
brought in from the organisation and given a ticket to contest the Assembly
polls, Khattar has a four-decade old association with the RSS. He was chosen by
the newly elected BJP legislators as their leader in the presence of central
observer M Venkaiah Naidu and Dinesh Sharma.
BJP insiders said that the moment
he was given ticket from Karnal, it was a foregone conclusion that he will be
the Chief Minister if the party were voted to power, a senior party leader
said.
“I have been given a big
responsibility. I assure you that we will work for the welfare of the people of
Haryana,” Khattar, the CM-designate said, soon after the announcement. He
added, “My Government will be transparent and there will be no discrimination
with any area.” He was referring to charges of regional discrimination in the
last 10 years of the Congress rule.
Looking at carving a non-Jat
political platform in the State on the patterns of the experiment which Bhajan
Lal did over two decades ago, the BJP chose a non-Jat leader from the Punjabi
community for running the State. Most of the 47 seats which the BJP won in the
polls came from areas where the non-Jats are influential. Sources said that in
a bid to further consolidate this section, which comprises 75 per cent of the
population of the State, the announcement of Khattar’s name was a mere
formality.
Being close to Prime Minister
Narendra Modi was an additional advantage for the Karnal MLA. In 1996, when
Modi was BJP in-charge of the northern States before becoming Gujarat Chief
Minister, Khattar worked closely with him in Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. This
perhaps explain how he was chosen for the job despite being a first time MLA at
the age of 60 and having no administrative experience or exposure to the
working of the Government. Khattar’s four-decade old association with the RSS
and his two-decade stint as as organising secretary of the BJP’s Haryana unit
swung the pendulum in his favour.
Known as a key strategist, he
held the post of the chairman of the party’s campaign committee for Haryana in
the Lok Sabha elections in which the party won seven of the State’s 10 seats. That
Khattar was close to the Prime Minister is also reflected by the fact that the PM had made him in-charge of 50 wards in
his Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency.
Given the importance of the
occasion as the BJP occupies centre stage in State politics for the first time
since it came into existence in 1980, the swearing-in ceremony of Khattar and
the ministers is likely to take place at the sprawling Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula on October
26.
Though Central observers had been
sent to elicit the opinion of the MLAs on leadership, sources said there was
complete unanimity on the name of Khattar in the meeting of the BJP legislature
party. Word had spread previous evening that he would be the Chief Minister and
no other leader came forward to contest the popular choice of the MLAs and that
of the central leadership of the party.
However, outside the venue of the
meeting, supporters of a few leaders were hopeful that there could be some
change at the last minute. Slogans too were raised in favour of some leaders
but the moment Khattar’s name was made public, there was no opposition
whatsoever from any quarters.
BJP Observer Dinesh Sharma said,
“The name of Khattar was proposed for Chief Minister by Haryana BJP president
Ram Bilas Sharma and election was unanimous.” Soon after the meeting, the BJP
submitted a letter to Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki staking claim to
form a Government. Following the constitutional procedure, the Governor invited
Khattar to form the Government.
In the 90-member Haryana
Assembly, the BJP has a simple majority of 47 MLAs. It vanquished both the
ruling Congress and the main Opposition INLD to romp home in a remarkable
performance, following a similar success in the Lok Sabha polls. (October
22, 2014 )
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