Nayab Singh Saini will be the new Haryana Chief Minister.
New Delhi:
Nayab Singh Saini will be the new Chief Minister of Haryana, the party said Tuesday afternoon, hours after his predecessor, senior BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar, and the entire cabinet – including three members of Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala’s JJP – stepped down.
Mr Saini, 54, has met Governor Bandaru Dattatreya to stake claim to form the government.
An influential figure within the OBC, or Other Backward Classes, community, Nayab Saini is the BJP’s Lok Sabha MP from Kurukshetra and was appointed the party’s state boss in October last year. He is also a close confidante of Mr Khattar, whose second (consecutive) term ends this year.
To be sworn in at 5 pm, he was selected after a meeting of the BJP’s legislative party, which was attended by Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda and National General Secretary Tarun Chugh.
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The BJP’s observers were reportedly told MLAs and the state unit wanted a new hand at the helm, to revitalise the party before the April/May Lok Sabha election and an Assembly election later this year.
भाजपा विधायक दल के नेता श्री @NayabSainiBJP जी ने राज्यपाल श्री @Dattatreya जी से भेंट कर सरकार बनाने का दावा पेश किया। pic.twitter.com/P7ZhQeYxLs
— Haryana BJP (@BJP4Haryana) March 12, 2024
The change in leadership, analysts have pointed out, is also what the BJP tends to do now ahead of state elections – a swap at the top to ward off anti-incumbency. Similar measures were taken before the Gujarat and Uttarakhand elections, for example. In both cases the BJP scored big wins.
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The party also changed its Chief Minister in Karnataka – replacing BS Yediyurappa with Basavaraj Bommai for the 2023 poll. That, however, backfired with the Congress recording a surprise win.
Mr Saini’s selection also represents the BJP’s focus on caste and OBC equations in each state before the general election. The BJP mad similar moves after the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh polls, replacing incumbents or high-profile choices with little-known OBC faces.
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The Saini caste – from which the new Chief Minister hails – is around eight per cent of the population, with sizeable numbers in Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar, Ambala, Hisar and Rewari districts.
The political landscape in Haryana was thrown into flux over the weekend after the ruling BJP-JJP alliance broke up after failed Lok Sabha seat-sharing talks; the JJP of now ex-Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala wanted two of the state’s 10 seats, but the BJP would only surrender one.
The JJP has now said it will contest all 10 seats on its own; the party is to hold a rally in Hisar district on Wednesday, at which Mr Chautala is expected to announce details of that campaign.
Unwilling to give up the second seat (the BJP won all 10 in 2019) and hesitant about sacking Mr Chautala – a move the party felt could anger farmers and the Jat community, which represents around 20 per cent of the population – the saffron party opted to break-up its own government.
Sources said the party is also keen on maximising the non-Jat vote share in the state, a message it hopes will be made clear by the cutting of ties with the JJP. The BJP reportedly hopes that Mr Chautala contesting on his own means the Jat votes it does not get will be split by the JJP and the Congress.
Haryana may have only 10 Lok Sabha seats, but it is a Hindi heartland state and is therefore a crucial battleground for the BJP. This is particularly so since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party set itself a target of 370 Lok Sabha seats (on its own) and 400 with National Democratic Alliance members.
There was also speculation – which may now prove to be true – that Mr Khattar could now make his Lok Sabha election debut. He could contest the Kurukshetra seat that will now be vacant.
Congress Growing In Haryana
The shuffle in Haryana’s political landscape also comes amid a possible strengthening of the Congress’ hand in the state, which is also set to hold an Assembly election this year.
Last week Hisar MP Brijendra Singh joined the opposition party with Mallikarjun Kharge present. “I have resigned from BJP’s primary membership due to compelling political reasons,” he said.
In the 2019 Assembly election the Congress won 31 seats – up from just 15 five years earlier. In the general election, like the JJP, the national party failed to win any seat, but finished second to the BJP in all 10 and saw a 5.5 per cent increase in its vote share to 28.5 per cent.
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