The Chief Minister-designate of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, an RSS pracharak (worker) for about 40 years, is considered a hardcore organisational man, known for his clean and low-profile image.
The 60-year-old Khattar, the State’s first-non-Jat Chief Minister in 18 years, was born in a Punjabi shopkeeper’s family that settled in a village in Rohtak district of Haryana after the Partition in 1947.
He joined the RSS in 1977, became a full-time pracharak in 1980, and later joined the BJP.
Khattar, a bachelor, has been the organisational general secretary of the BJP in Haryana since 2000, and was chairman of the party’s Haryana Election Committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
A first-time MLA, he won the Assembly polls from Karnala constituency by a margin of 63,736 votes, and is considered a close aide of party president Amit Shah.
He was crucial to the successful strategy devised by Shah for the Assembly polls, leading his party to form the Government on its own.
Khattar has also worked closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 1996 Jammu & Kashmir elections as well as later in Bhuj, Gujarat, after the earthquake.
The Chief Minister-designate, who is an administrative greenhorn, has a challenging task ahead in the State, as he faces strong opposition from the Indian National Lok Dal, led by Om Prakash Chautala, and the Congress, led by former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Khap panchayats However, it remains to be seen which way the Khattar regime takes the lot of women in a State such as Haryana, which is known for its skewed sex ratio and ‘honour killings’, with no major political party willing to take on the all-powerful Khap panchayats, dominated by Jats.
As soon as news broke out of Khattar’s appointment as CM, the social media raked up controversial statements made by him that girls need to wear “decent” clothes to avoid sexual assault, and that “our country's tradition asks girls to dress decently.”
On Khaps, the Chief Minister-designate had said: “Khaps maintain the tradition of a girl and boy being brother and sister.
“They are just making sure that a girl and boy do not see each other in the wrong way. These rulings help prevent rapes too.”