Khattar quits, OBC leader Nayab Saini to be sworn in today as Haryana CM

Chandigarh: The BJP on Tuesday named OBC leader Nayab Singh Saini as Haryana’s new chief minister, hours after the resignation of Manohar Lal Khattar from the post along with his cabinet ministers.

Saini, 54, who is seen to be close to Khattar, will be sworn in as CM later in the day.

The surprise development in Chandigarh comes just weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Khattar’s second term as chief minister was also to end in October, when the assembly polls are due.

Khattar and all 13 other members of the BJP-led council of ministers submitted their resignations to the Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya— apparently at the directions of the BJP’s central leadership.

Shortly after this, Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs headed to a meeting of the party’s legislature group, which unanimously picked Saini as its leader.

Saini, who is the MP from Kurukshetra, was appointed the president of the BJP’s Haryana unit only in October.

BJP's Thanesar MLA Subhash Sudha and J P Dalal, who held Agriculture portfolio, told reporters that Saini was unanimously elected as the leader of legislative group and will take oath as CM in the evening.

The BJP had replaced Om Prakash Dhankar with Saini as the state party chief in October, a move then seen as an attempt to strengthen its hold on the OBC community. The vote of the Jats, the most populous community in the state, is seen to be divided among the Congress, the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and the Indian National Lok Dal.

The switch in Haryana comes amid speculation that ruling BJP-JJP coalition was coming apart. JJP leader Dushyant Chautala was the deputy chief minister and there were two other members of his party in the outgoing Khattar-led government.

The BJP, which won all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana by large margins in 2019, appeared keen to fight the upcoming parliamentary polls on its own.

Saini was a minister in the first Khattar cabinet. He was an MLA when he fought the Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

At present, the BJP has 41 MLAs in the 90-member House while the JJP has 10. The ruling combine also enjoyed the support of six of the seven independents.The party appears top be comfortably placed in Haryana even without the JJP support.

The main opposition Congress has 30 MLAs and the Indian National Lok Dal and Haryana Lokhit Party have one seat each.