Jobs and Jats dent Khattar’s prospects

NEW DELHI: Abki baar 75 paar” was not to be. And defeated Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar looked adequately crestfallen on Thursday, showing the victory sign with a hand that seemed too heavy for him to carry.


With the party getting 40 seats out of the total 90, Khattar and BJP are now looking at rebel candidates who won to bail them out. It was a steep decline from the clean sweep of 10 parliamentary seats just some months ago.

For a while during the run-up to the polls, it did look like the magic would be repeated. Huge masses had turned out for Khattar’s Jan Aashirwad Yatra, kicked off by senior leaders Rajnath Singh and J P Nadda. The show culminated in Rohtak on October 8. PM Narendra Modi had then termed Khattar the “face” of the party.

But visits by Modi, home minister Amit Shah and a battery of Union ministers and star campaigners didn’t impress Haryanvi voters as much as Khattar would have liked.

An RSS worker, Khattar was declared CM after BJP won 47 seats in the 2014 assembly polls. He played down his surname and preferred to be identified as the “fourth Lal of Haryana”. Watchers of politics have blamed arrogance in ministers, the government’s failure in addressing various local issues, and the functioning of the CMO as reasons for the bad showing by Khattar.

Various employees’ unions were upset with Khattar for a variety of reasons — the economic slowdown didn’t help matters — and the youth said they didn’t have jobs. Then there was the recruitment scam in the Haryana Staff Selection Commission that dented the government’s image. It overshadowed the popular decision to have educated people — above matriculates — lead local panchayats. He is also the first CM to give independence to the DG of town and country planning so that officers can take their own calls on CLU-related issues.

Hailing from the Punjabi community which forms nearly 8% of the state, Khattar and his team were able to attract non-Jat voters to the BJP fold. One thing that people patted his back for was his insistence on not promoting nepotism. He pushed 17 new faces from within the party, all of whom got tickets.

All this, though, wasn’t enough to give him a majority. Experts said violence during the Jat quota stir was the turning point in Haryana’s politics. In a state where Jats constitute 27% of the population, the community began to get disenchanted with BJP.

But those who know Khattar from his RSS days said the man should be written off at one’s own peril.