Four in the race for Haryana top slot

Manohar Lal Khattar : 60-year-old Khattar, who won the Karnal seat with a margin of 63,736 votes, has been an RSS pracharak for the last four decades.

He is active in the BJP for the last 20 years. Khattar is reportedly close to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. When Modi was in-charge of Haryana as a BJP general secretary in late 1990s, Khattar was BJP State general secretary.

He has also worked at the BJP national headquarters. He was chairman of the Campaign Committee in Haryana during the Lok Sabha elections.

Ram Bilas Sharma : 65-year-old Sharma is the president of the State BJP. A former minister in the State Cabinet, Sharma has represented the Mahendergarh seat for four terms. In this election, he retained the seat with a margin of 34,491 votes. In August, he had held a Vijay Sankalp Yatra, a State-wide road-show, to mobilise the cadre ahead of the Assembly polls. A post-graduate in science, Sharma has been active in State politics since 1977.

Captain Abhimanyu : He is the Jat face of the BJP in Haryana. A national secretary and spokesperson of the party, Abhimanyu had helped Amit Shah in western Uttar Pradesh to change the fortunes of the saffron party during the Lok Sabha elections. The 47-year-old won the Narnaund constituency with a margin of about 5,000 votes.

Rao Inderjeet Singh : 63-year-old Singh, the scion of Rewari dynasty, is the OBC face of the BJP in Haryana. Singh, who joined the BJP from the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, is now a minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet. A law graduate, Singh had helped the BJP to gather the predominant Yadav votes in the State in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. He represents Gurgaon in the Lok Sabha.