Chandigarh: Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya administers the oath to BJP leader Nayab Singh Saini during the swearing-in ceremony, in Chandigarh on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.(Photo: IANS/CMO)
Chandigarh. First-time BJP MP Nayab Singh Saini took the oath as the Chief Minister of Haryana on Tuesday, along with five cabinet colleagues.
Following the breakdown of the BJP-JJP alliance, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his entire cabinet, including Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala, resigned on Tuesday morning. After this, during the meeting of BJP MLAs, Saini’s name was unanimously decided for the next Chief Minister.
Saini has a strong hold on the eight percent OBC community in the state. He touched Khattar’s feet before and after taking the oath as Chief Minister. He will remain the Chief Minister for seven months until the elections are held in the state.
The Saini caste has a significant population in Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar, Ambala, Hisar, and Rewari districts.
Saini, along with Kanwar Pal Gujjar, Moolchand Sharma, Ranjit Singh Chautala, J.P. Dalal and Banwarilal took oath as ministers.
Governor Bandaru Dattatraya administered the oath of office to him at a ceremony at Raj Bhawan, Chandigarh. The swearing-in ceremony started 20 minutes before the scheduled time. Anil Vij, who was the Home and Health Minister in the Khattar government, did not attend the ceremony. He got up and left the morning meeting as soon as Saini’s name was proposed.
The outgoing cabinet included 14 ministers, including BJP leader Khattar and three JJP members.
BJP has 41 MLAs in the 90-member Haryana Assembly, while the JJP has 10. The ruling coalition has the support of six out of seven independent MLAs.
According to sources, Khattar will now contest the Lok Sabha elections. It is believed that he can be fielded from Karnal.
Khattar’s close aide Sanjay Bhatia, a Punjabi face, had won the 2019 elections by a margin of 6.5 lakh votes. He can be made the state chief of the party in place of Saini.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP had won all 10 seats in the state.
Political observers told IANS that Saini’s promotion to the top post is being seen as an attempt to appease non-Jat and OBC voters. Besides, it is also an attempt to counter the anti-incumbency wave against Khattar, who was in power since 2014. In Haryana politics, the support of the Jat or landlord community, which constitutes about 25 percent of the state’s population, is largely divided between the Congress, Jannayak Janata Party and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).
BJP insiders say that apart from being an OBC and being close to Khattar, old association with the RSS also helped Saini rise to the top.
“This is the BJP’s strategy to garner the support of sub-castes within the Other Backward Castes,” a BJP leader told IANS.
Saini, Lok Sabha MP from Kurukshetra, who won the seat by a huge vote margin of over 3.83 lakh, was appointed as the state BJP chief in October last year. Born in 1970, Saini entered politics about 30 years ago. In the 2014 assembly elections, he was elected MLA from Narayangarh. He was inducted into the cabinet in 2016. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Saini contested and won from Kurukshetra constituency, defeating Nirmal Singh of Congress by a huge margin
