Gurugram: From working as an workplace assistant and doing odd jobs for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to changing into Haryana chief minister months earlier than meeting elections, former Kurukshetra MP and Other Backward Class (OBC) chief Nayab Singh Saini’s rise has been meteoric.
Last week, 54-year-old Saini, a loyalist of former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, took oath because the state’s new CM and gained the ground take a look at within the Haryana meeting. The change on the helm got here a few months earlier than two main elections within the state — the final election in May and the meeting elections in October.
For Saini, who was made the state BJP chief in October final 12 months, being made the eleventh chief minister of the state marks a big leap in his political profession. Soon after Saini was sworn in, Khattar stated his affiliation with the brand new CM went again to 1996, when the latter was an assistant on the get together’s Rohtak workplace. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in control of the get together’s affairs in Haryana round this time.
“He (Saini) used to type letters and perform chores like preparing office records and correspondence,” Khattar advised the media final week.
According to a BJP insider, Saini was so dedicated to Khattar that he would often volunteer to drive the automotive when the latter needed to journey.
Political analysts consider that the BJP’s determination to interchange Khattar with Saini months earlier than meeting elections has two goals — to beat anti-incumbency within the state after two phrases of the BJP authorities and to assist win over the state’s OBC votes.
Although there isn’t a genuine information on caste-wise inhabitants in Haryana, varied estimates put the state’s OBC or backward class inhabitants at 40 p.c.
The determination additionally got here when the BJP authorities led by Modi was going through protests from farmers over their demand for a legislation guaranteeing Minimum Support Price, a market intervention that gives the minimal charge at which farmers may promote their crops to the federal government. Although these protests are largely by farmers in Punjab, Haryana farmer associations have condemned what they declare is harsh police motion in opposition to these protesters.
According to political analyst Mahabir Jaglan, the gamble of appointing Saini to amass the state’s backward lessons’ votes could not work.
Saini, he stated, wasn’t from the artisan lessons of backward castes who had been thought-about poor and socially backward, however from the dominant agrarian castes resembling Yadavs, Gujjars, and Kamboj. Although these caste teams are on Haryana’s checklist of socially and educationally backward lessons, they’re thought-about to be higher off than many others.
“Ever since Rahul Gandhi started demanding a caste census, the BJP became wary of the OBCs shifting towards the Congress. But this may not work as the BJP thinks. Artisanal castes among the backward classes are much higher in number than the agrarian backwards like Yadav, Saini, Lodhi, Gujjar, Meo, and Goasain, and they may not vote with the latter,” he stated, including that in addition to this, some sections of the society, resembling farmers, are sad with the BJP over its insurance policies and never merely in opposition to Khattar personally.
Also Read: Anti-incumbency, Rahul’s caste census name, OBC maths — why BJP changed Khattar with Saini in Haryana
BYJM to Haryana BJP president — Nayab Singh’s rise
OBC chief Nayab Singh Saini was born in Ambala’s Mirzapur Majra village on 25 January, 1970, making him the primary CM to be born after an impartial state of Haryana was carved out of the undivided Punjab in 1966.
His father Telu Ram was an ex-serviceman and a small farmer, and his mom Kulwant Kaur was a homemaker.
Saini has a BA diploma from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University and a level in legislation from Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut. In November 2022, Saini’s spouse Suman unsuccessfully contested the Zila Parishad election.
The couple has two youngsters, a son, Aniket, who’s pursuing a level in legislation from Chandigarh, and a daughter, Anshika, a scholar of Class 12 in a Chandigarh college.
In 2002, Saini was appointed the district common secretary of BJP’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). He turned BJP’s Ambala district president in 2012.
The CM contested his first meeting elections from Naraingarh in 2009. Although that try was unsuccessful and the BJP chief got here in fifth with solely 7 p.c votes, he as soon as once more contested, and gained, from the identical seat in 2014, beating sitting Congress MLA Ram Kishan by over 24,000 votes.
In the 2019 parliamentary polls, the BJP fielded him from Kurukshetra, a constituency the place its sitting MP Raj Kumar Saini rebelled in 2018 and floated his outfit, the Loktantra Suraksha Manch. Nayab Saini beat his nearest rival, Congress’s Nirmal Singh, by over 31 p.c votes.
In October 2023, the BJP appointed Saini as its Haryana president, changing O.P. Dhankar.
“Saini comes from a middle-class family, not too rich but not too poor. He has always been down-to-earth, regardless of what he’s attained in politics,” Rajesh Ratoura, a former Ambala district BJP president whose affiliation with Saini goes again to 2002, advised ThePrint over the cellphone.
According to poll-watchdog Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), Saini’s affidavit in 2009 confirmed he and his spouse Suman collectively had Rs 83 lakh value of property — Rs 45.05 lakh movable and Rs 38 lakh immovable property — whereas his spouse had jewellery value Rs 1.75 lakh and a home value Rs 3 lakh at Naraingarh.
In 2014, the couple’s property rose by Rs 10 lakh to Rs 93.18 lakh.
Neither of those affidavits confirmed liabilities. However, his affidavit for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections confirmed that he had Rs 3.57 crore in property — together with a 300-sq yard home in Panchkula — and Rs 57 lakh in liabilities.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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