In major breakthrough in BJP's efforts to cobble together a majority in the Haryana Assembly, the Jannayak Janata Party led by Dushyant Chautala offered its support to the saffron party to form government in the state.
“BJP and JJP will form government together in Haryana,” BJP president Amit Shah said at a press meet after his meeting with Dushyant in Delhi.
Shah said the two parties have clinched an alliance and the regional party will get the post of deputy chief minister in the new government, which is set to take oath in a few days. Incumbent Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar is likely head the new government as well.
"Going by the mandate of the voters of Haryana, leaders of both parties have decided that BJP and JJP will form the government together. The chief minister will be from the BJP and deputy chief minister will be from the JJP," Shah said.
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The saffron party had engaged in hectic parleys with the JJP, which has 10 legislators, after the former's tally fell to 40, six short of the majority mark in the 90-member assembly.
Earlier, Haryana Lokhit Party MLA Gopal Kanda's unconditional support to the BJP to form government had triggered a political storm. He is an accused in two abetment-to-suicide cases. Besides the opposition parties, a section of the BJP leaders, including Uma Bharti, too, had expressed strong reservation over the saffron party accepting the support of Kanda.
BJP, in the meantime, claimed that it had the backing of most of the seven independent MLAs and several of them had given their letters of support to Khattar during a meeting at the residence of the party's working president, J.P. Nadda, in Delhi.
Earlier, Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala, along with other senior party leaders from the state, had met Dushyant in Delhi. News agency PTI had quoted certain sources as saying that Shah had spoken to the young Chautala even before the results were out, following inputs that the party might not get a majority on its own.
Dushyant had said that he would extend support to any party which agrees with his organisation's common minimum programme. "No one is untouchable for us," he had said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Khattar will be elected the BJP legislative party leader at a meeting in Chandigarh on Saturday and will then stake claim before the governor to form the government.