Khattar (centre) looks on as BJP leaders receive a letter from Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki inviting the party to form the government in the state in Chandigarh yesterday.
IANS/Chandigarh
The Bharatiya Janata Party is all set to take power in Haryana for the first time.
BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar will be sworn in as the new chief minister on Sunday.
State Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki yesterday invited Khattar, who earlier in the day was elected leader of the Haryana BJP Legislative Party, to form the new government in the state.
The oath-taking ceremony will take place at the Tau Devi Lal Sports Stadium in Panchkula, near here, instead of the Haryana Raj Bhavan.
Khattar, 60, will be the first BJP chief minister of the state, which was formed on November 1, 1966.
The former Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) ‘pracharak’ was chosen by the newly elected BJP legislators as their leader at a meeting here.
The BJP, which created political history on Sunday by winning 47 of the 90 seats in the Haryana assembly elections, yesterday staked its claim to form the next government in the state. The party until now used to play second fiddle to other regional parties.
A letter from the party was submitted to the Haryana governor by Khattar after he was unanimously elected leader of the BJP legislative group.
Khattar was accompanied to Raj Bhavan by central ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Krishan Pal Gurjar, BJP national vice president Dinesh Sharma, state party president Ram Bilas Sharma, and other BJP leaders.
“I have been chosen by the party legislators and the BJP leadership for this responsibility. I can assure you that we will work for the welfare of the people of Haryana,” Khattar said.
“My government will be transparent and there will be no discrimination. We will take everyone together,” Khattar told journalists.
Despite being a first-time legislator with no administrative experience, the BJP chose the man from the Punjabi community to play its debutant leading role in the Jat-dominated politics of Haryana.
Khattar is seen as a “no-nonsense man” with organisational skills.
Naidu and Sharma attended the meeting of the legislators as observers sent by the BJP’s parliamentary board.
“The name of Khattar was proposed for chief minister by Haryana BJP president Ram Bilas Sharma and he (Khattar) was unanimously elected,” BJP central observer Dinesh Sharma said.
The BJP got the majority on its own for the first time in Haryana.
Besides Khattar, other names earlier doing rounds for the chief minister’s post were those of Ram Bilas Sharma, state BJP spokesman Abhimanyu, senior legislator Anil Vij and BJP Kisan Cell leader O P Dhankar from among the recently elected legislators.
Khattar claims he never aspired to be the chief minister.
“I was never in that race. I am an organisational man. Whatever responsibility the party puts on me, I will accept it and deliver,” he said in a recent television interview.
Khattar has some things which are similar to those in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s life.
While Modi renounced family life to dedicate himself to the RSS, Khattar chose to be a bachelor and do the same. Impressed by the RSS, he got associated with it in 1977. In 1980, he joined the RSS full-time as ‘Pracharak’.
Like Modi, who was not even a legislator when he was made the Gujarat chief minister in 2001, Khattar contested and won his first election to become legislator only this week.
Khattar worked with Modi when the latter was in charge of the BJP’s affairs in Haryana in the late 1990s. Khattar was called by Modi to work in the Kutch area of Gujarat after the devastating earthquake there in 2000. He worked for the BJP in several states, including Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi.
He comes from a humble family background - his father and grandfather took up odd jobs and even worked as labourers after migrating from West Punjab (now in Pakistan) in 1947.
Khattar was born in 1954 in Nindana village in Rohtak district of Haryana. His family first opened a shop in the village and later bought agricultural land and took to farming.
A keen student and debater, Khattar, the eldest son in the family, wanted to become a doctor. He became the first person in his family to study beyond Class 10 and even went to Delhi for higher education. However, he decided to get into business and opened a small shop in Delhi’s congested high-volume trading market Sadar Bazar after borrowing money from his family.
While managing his new business venture, Khattar completed his graduation from Delhi University and helped establish his siblings.
