NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is caught in a dilemma over naming the new chief minister for Haryana due to its inability to decide whether to select a Jat or a non-Jat for the post.
Federal minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, assisted by another BJP functionary Dinesh Sharma, has been tasked to consult the 47 newly-elected Haryana lawmakers of Haryana and apprise the party of the prevailing mood.
The duo is scheduled to reach the state capital Chandigarh which it shares with neighbouring Punjab on Tuesday to hold the meeting. BJP wants the new chief minister to be sworn-in on Thursday to coincide with the festival of lights, Diwali, which is considered an auspicious day to start anything new.
The BJP surprised many by emerging victorious when results of Haryana legislative assembly elections were declared on Sunday by winning 47 seats in the 90-member assembly. While BJP had shared power with the now defunct Haryana Vikas Party of Chaudhary Bansi Lal and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in the past as junior partners, it is the first time the party contested more than 28 seats in the state carved out of Punjab in 1966.
The Jat community which constitutes approximately 27 per cent of the state’s over 26 million population is a dominant caste that has traditionally dominated Haryana politics. Five out of nine chief ministers of the state so far belonged to this community. The last non-Jat chief minister was Bhajan Lal, 18 years ago.
BJP got overwhelming support from the non-Jats of the state helping it script its historical victory. The party inducted several Jat leaders including senior Congress party leader Chaudhary Birender Singh from various parties ahead of Haryana elections to make a dent in the Jat vote bank. The party, however, is apprehensive now about naming a Jat leader as its chief minister and annoy the non-Jats which are dominated by Hindu Punjabis, Ahirs (Yadavs) and Gujjars among others.
The BJP parliamentary board at its meeting on Sunday evening is understood to have debated at least half a dozen names for the chief minister’s post. Those discussed included federal ministers Sushma Swaraj, Rao Inderjeet Singh and Krishan Pal Gurjar along with former national spokesman and Jat leader Capt Abhimanyu, state unit president Rambilas Sharma and senior leader Manohar Lal Khattar and zeroed down on Capt Abhimanyu and Khattar.
According to sources in the BJP, the party has made up its mind to appoint Khattar, 61, as the new Haryana chief minister.
Khattar is a first time lawmaker from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) background. Besides his RSS links, he is a Punjabi which constitute about 19 per cent of Haryana population and was elected from Karnal constituency of North Haryana. He will be the first Punjabi and the first-ever representative from North Haryana to become the chief minister. BJP intends to placate the Jat community by appointing Capt Abhimanyu as the deputy chief minister and induct Chaudhary Birender Singh as a minister in the federal government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to reshuffle and expand his council of ministers sometime next month.
Capt Abhimanyu incidentally is son-in-law of former Delhi chief minister late Sahib Singh Verma. He along with the ex-chief minister’s parliamentarian son Parvesh Verma would come handy in getting Jat votes when fresh polls are ordered in Delhi sometime early next year to break the existing political impasse in the hung Delhi assembly.
