Manohar Lal Khattar is a low-profile RSS leader who is known for his quiet work on the field and in the BJP that has earned him the reputation of a tough task master with a no-nonsense approach.
60-year-old Khattar, who once wanted to become a doctor, is a man known for his organisational skills. He enjoys a clean image and is considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom he has worked in the past.
Khattar, who is a bachelor and a first-time MLA, has worked for almost 40 years as a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak.
Known for his political acumen, he played the role of a master strategist and successfully led many electoral campaigns for his party, the latest being the 2014 Parliamentary elections in Haryana as the Chairman of Election Campaign Committee.
It was in 1996, that Manohar Lal started working with Modi, who was then in charge of Haryana. In 2002, Manohar Lal was given the charge of Jammu and Kashmir as the State’s Election in-charge.
Notably, Modi started his election campaign for the 2014 Haryana Assembly polls by addressing his first rally on October 4 at Karnal, the constituency from where Khattar recorded an emphatic win.
Coming from a humble agricultural background, his family arrived in Haryana from Pakistan post-partition.
They settled at Nindana, a village situated in Haryana’s Rohtak district. To survive, his father and grandfather took up odd jobs as labourers, finally saving enough to start a small shop. It was in Nindana that Manohar Lal was born in 1954.