India
With BJP drawing most of its support from non-Jats, balance tilted in ex-RSS pracharak's favour
Updated : Apr 11, 2016, 11:32 AM IST
Former RSS pracharak Manohar Lal Khattar was greeted with slogans of "Bharat mata ki jai" and "Haryana ka CM kaisa ho, Manohar Lal Khattar jaisa ho" at the BJP headquarters on Monday.
A day after the BJP's victory in Haryana, Khattar, the frontrunner for the post, was among the state leaders who queued up to meet party chief Amit Shah.
Though Khattar said he was there just as an MLA, sources said he led the race for chief minister's post. The BJP legislative party in the state is meeting on Tuesday at the UT state guest house in Chandigarh to elect its leader. Parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu and party leader Dinesh Sharma will be present at the meeting as observers.
With the BJP drawing most of its support from the non-Jats in a state where it has come to power for the first time on its own, the party decided on having a non-Jat as its chief minister. The others whose names were doing the rounds-- party's state unit chief Ram Bilas Sharma, senior MLA Anil Vij and Kisan cell leader Om Prakash Dhankar-- also met Shah.
The leaders had separate meetings with the party chief and maintained that the BJP parliamentary board was the authority to take a decision on it. "Whatever decision it takes will be accepted by all," said Khattar, 60, who had worked as a RSS pracharak in Haryana for nearly 40 years, won the Karnal seat with a margin of 63,736 votes.
A party leader said there were around four MLAs in the race for the post, ruling out any MP being named. Earlier, minister and Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjeet Singh's name was also being speculated.
The BJP, which had put up 26 Jats in the state where Jat politics has had a sway, evaded a Jat and non-Jat polarisation by not putting up a chief ministerial candidate. The election was fought under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership in Haryana as well as Maharashtra.
Party sources said though the party had banked on the non-Jat vote-- Brahmins, Thakurs, Punjabis, Gujjars and Dalits-- weaning it away mostly from the Congress, it did manage to split the Jat vote in some places. But, the INLD has won eight of its strongholds, indicating that it did retain its hold over its core vote bank of Jats.