Nayab Singh Saini likely to take oath as Haryana CM on October 15

Chandigarh: BJP leader Nayab Singh Saini is likely to take oath as the Chief Minister of Haryana in Panchkula’s parade ground on October 15 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several Union Ministers, Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states and party’s top functionaries likely to attend the ceremony.

A 10-member committee headed by the Panchkula District Commissioner has been set up by the Chief Secretary to make arrangements for the oath-taking ceremony.

Saini had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders in Delhi on Wednesday after scoring a spectacular hat-trick in Haryana by winning 48 seats, 11 more than the Congress.

Caretaker Chief Minister Saini, under whose leadership the party fought the high-octane electoral battle and overcame a 10-year anti-incumbency, may be retained as the CM, party leaders believe.

The BJP won a landslide majority by winning 48 seats in a House of 90. The Congress was the second largest party with 37 seats, while the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) got only two seats. Independent candidates got three seats, who extended unconditional support to the BJP, whereas Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) drew a blank.

The BJP Legislature Party is likely to meet a day ahead of the oath-taking ceremony in Chandigarh to elect its leader who will be the state’s new Chief Minister, most probably Saini, 54, a non-Jat but Other Backward Classes (OBC) leader. Saini had replaced BJP veteran Manohar Lal Khattar as the Chief Minister in March, just two months before the Lok Sabha elections.

Caretaker Chief Minister Saini won the Ladwa Assembly seat by 16,054 votes, defeating his nearest rival and Congress candidate Mewa Singh.

Eight out of 10 ministers in the outgoing Saini cabinet faced defeat. The two who won were Mahipal Dhanda and Mool Chand Sharma from Panipat Rural and Ballabhgarh seats, respectively.

The party’s seven-time lawmaker, Anil Vij, is the seniormost in the party. He is among the frontrunners for a Cabinet berth, apart from Dalit lawmakers like six-time MLA Krishan Lal Panwar (Israna) and two-time MLA Krishan Bedi (Narwana), both loyalists of former Chief Minister Khattar.

The women prospective Cabinet Ministers include first-timers Arti Rao (Ateli), daughter of Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh, and Shruti Chaudhry (Tosham), daughter of Rajya Sabha member Kiran Chaudhry. Arti is an OBC while Shruti represents the Jat community.

Saini was made the CM in March to counter the anti-incumbency wave against Khattar for his nine-and-a-half-year helm. In his 56 days of governance, Saini claimed to have done so much development that Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda did in 10 years as the Chief Minister. “In 56 days, I have taken 126 historic decisions for Haryana’s development,” CM Saini said in his election campaigns.

A confidant of Khattar, Saini entered politics almost 30 years ago. He was elected as an MLA from Naraingarh in the 2014 Assembly polls and inducted into the Cabinet in 2016.

Saini was keen to re-enter the poll fray from Karnal, the seat he won in the June bypoll when he replaced Khattar as the Chief Minister. However, the BJP leadership considered Ladwa, which came into existence in 2007, the safest seat for Saini as the party polled 47.14 per cent of the votes in the June parliamentary polls.

On September 15, BJP senior-most leader and five-time legislator Anil Vij asserted that he would stake a claim for the chief minister’s post if the party returned to power in the Assembly polls. Rebutting his claims spontaneously, the party’s state in-charge, Dharmendra Pradhan, said the party would achieve a hat-trick of wins under Saini’s leadership and he’s the BJP’s chief ministerial face.