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.
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.
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.
