Former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Gurgaon MP-elect Rao Inderjit Singh are among the Haryana BJP leaders expected to be inducted as Union ministers in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The new council of ministers is set to take oath on Sunday.
Manohar Lal Khattar Political Journey
Khattar, 70, emerged as an unexpected choice for Haryana’s chief minister when the BJP won the state election independently in 2019. However, in March this year, the party replaced Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as chief minister, ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections. Recently, Khattar won the Karnal constituency in the Lok Sabha elections by a significant margin of 2,32,577 votes.
As chief minister, Khattar was known for implementing a transparent recruitment system for government jobs and introducing online transfers for government employees, particularly teachers. Despite these efforts, he faced criticism from the Opposition for the introduction of family IDs (Parivar Pehchan Patras) and mandatory web portals for farmers to upload crop details. He also faced protests from farmers during the agitations against the central farm laws in 2020-21.
Khattar hails from a Hindu Punjabi family that migrated during Partition. His early years involved assisting his father in farming before pursuing higher education at Delhi University. Khattar’s long tenure as an RSS pracharak took him across various regions in Haryana, giving him a deep understanding of the state’s issues. He served as the general secretary (organization) of Haryana BJP from 1994 to 2004 and later as the zonal organizing secretary for Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, and Haryana. He played a key role in the BJP’s victory in Haryana during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Rao Inderjit Singh’s Political Career
Rao Inderjit Singh, a five-time MP from Gurgaon and four-time MLA, switched from the Congress to the BJP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He is a descendant of Rao Tula Ram, a 19th-century king of the Ahirwal region, and his father, Rao Birender Singh, was Haryana’s second chief minister.
Singh has previously served as a minister of state (MoS) in two Modi ministries and held the MoS defense and external affairs portfolios in the UPA government. He graduated from Delhi University’s Hindu College, earned a law degree, and entered politics at 26. Singh is also an accomplished shooter, having won three gold medals at the South Asian Federation Games. According to his recent affidavit, Singh’s assets have grown to Rs 121.7 crore, a three-fold increase since the last election.
In the recent elections, Singh won with a margin of 75,079 votes, a significant drop from his previous margin of 3.86 lakh votes in 2019, securing a vote share of 50.48 percent.
