Khattar and Fadnavis: a tale of two new Chief Ministers

The appointment of Manohar Lal Khattar and Devendra Fadnavis as Chief Ministers of Haryana and Maharashtra, respectively, was the result of a natural process of selection rather than any inclination that the BJP’s central leadership may have had to run the States through remote control.

The consolidation of non-Jat voters in the BJP’s favour in Haryana meant that the party could not have appointed a Jat CM. That eliminated even a remote chance that a relative newcomer like Captain Abhimanyu had of staking his claim to the top post.

The field was hence open for essentially three strong candidates — Kishan Pal Gujjar; Rao Inderjit Singh, the scion of the Rewari dynasty and a prominent Yadav leader; Ram Bilas Sharma, the State BJP president and the party’s Brahmin face in Haryana; and, lastly, organisational strongman Khattar.

Besides the fact that Gujjar and Singh are already junior ministers in the Union Cabinet, what essentially went against the latter was that he had joined the BJP only recently. He had been with the Congress till very recently and appointing him, despite his experience and sophistication, would have triggered resentment in the party ranks.

As far as Sharma is concerned, he is not really a shining example of the clean and transparent governance that Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised in his election campaign.

That left Khattar as the lone man standing. Although his reported “proximity” to Modi is widely being cited as the reason for his appointment, the reality is that Khattar is the man who built the BJP in Haryana. He naturally knows Modi — the Prime Minister, in his earlier role as party general secretary, was in charge of political affairs in Haryana.

But the reason for Khattar’s appointment is that as organisation secretary, this Punjabi trader whose family migrated from Pakistan during the Partition is among the most respected leaders in Haryana BJP. He has never courted any controversy and, as a life-long pracharak of the RSS, has a certain moral standing in the party.

In the case of Fadnavis in Maharashtra, a similar process of elimination was followed. Unlike Nitin Gadkari, whose rather public show of strength to stake claim at chief ministership raised heckles in Delhi, Fadnavis remained appropriately discreet about his ambitions.

Besides representing the BJP’s fresh, clean image after 10 years of the Congress-NCP’s scam-tainted rule, Fadnavis’ RSS loyalty and ability to build bridges in Maharashtra’s faction-ridden politics also worked to his favour. Fadnavis was Gopinath Munde’s favourite to be the State unit president in April last year but, after he got the job, he managed to soothe nerves in the rival Gadkari camp as well.

The candidature of Vinod Tawde, whose Maratha lineage may have prompted considerations about his claim, and Eknath Khadse did not gain enough currency under the circumstances.

In Khadke’s case, his OBC credentials were matched by Gopinath Munde’s daughter Pankaja Munde. Pankaja, meanwhile, spoilt any chance that she ever had by projecting her own case as CM. Khadse is also considered close to Gadkari, a negative in the present situation, where the former BJP president has painted himself in a corner by his untimely grandstanding.

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