Kurukshetra MP, OBC leader and Haryana BJP president Nayab Singh Saini will be Haryana's next chief minister, the party announced hours after Manohar Lal Khattar and the entire cabinet tendered their resignation.
"Nayab Singh Saini will be the next CM of Haryana. Everybody is going to meet the Governor now,” BJP MLA Krishan Lal Middha said after a meeting of the BJP legislators in Chandigarh. The new chief minister is expected to be sworn in later today.
In the 90-member Haryana assembly, the BJP has 41 MLAs, and also enjoys the support of five independent MLAs and Haryana Lokhit Party MLA Gopal Kanda.
Saini, regarded as Khattar's confidante, joined the Haryana BJP in 1996, and rose through the ranks quickly and became the district general secretary of the BJP Youth Wing in Ambala in 2002. Three years later, he was appointed as its district president.
He was also the state general secretary of the BJP Kisan Morcha in Haryana in 2009, and district president of Ambala BJP in 2012.
Saini won from the Narayangarh constituency in the 2014 assembly polls—his first stint as an MLA—and was appointed a minister in the Haryana government in 2016.
Saini was appointed Haryana BJP president in October last year. He won the Kurukshetra seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections by more than 3.83 lakh votes, beating Nirmal Singh of the Congress.
Caste equation, too, might have been a factor—the Saini caste accounts for around eight per cent of the Haryana population. It has influence over regions in Kurukshetra, Ambala, Hisar, Yamunanagar and Rewari districts.
Earlier today, Khattar and his cabinet ministers submitted their resignations to Governor Bandaru Dattatreya.
The cabinet comprised 14 ministers, including Khattar and three members of the Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala-led JJP.
The move comes amid reports of a split in Haryana's ruling BJP and Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) coalition, over seat-sharing ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.