In 15 years, it has been a meteoric rise for Nayab Singh Saini
From losing his security deposit from the Naraingarh Assembly segment in 2009 to becoming Haryana Chief Minister for the second time—all within a span of 15 years—it has been a meteoric rise for unassuming Nayab Singh Saini.
In fact, Lady Luck has been smiling on the 54-year-old politician known for his approachable demeanour post 2014 Assembly poll (when he bounced back from Naraingarh with a winning margin of 24,361) on the CM-designate — a protégé of former Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Saini, the OBC face of the saffron party, perfectly fitted into the Jat-non Jat narrative of the BJP. The BJP’s gamble ultimately paid off as Saini delivered for the BJP with the party winning an unprecedented third term in office winning 48 of 90 seats under his stewardship.
Proximity to Khattar saw him being appointed as Minister of State in Khattar’s tenure from 2014-19. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Saini made forays into national politics by winning the Kurukshetra seat by a massive margin. In fact, Saini owed his elevation as state BJP chief to Khattar on October 27, 2023, when the saffron party wanted to replace its Jat face Om Prakash Dhankar with an OBC leader, apparently with an eye on 2024 Assembly poll.
Born on January 25, 1970 in Mizapur Majra, a village near Ambala in Haryana, Saini cut his political teeth under RSS ‘pracharak’-turned-politician Khattar in 1996. Rising from the ranks, Saini was appointed Ambala district secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in 2002. Later, he was held the post of district president of the morcha before graduating as the Ambala district president.
Meanwhile, a subdued Anil Vij, BJP’s senior-most MLA, who endorsed the name of Nayab Singh Saini as leader of the legislative party paving the way for his elevation as Chief Minister tomorrow, today asserted that he could even work as ‘chowkidar’ of the saffron party. Vij, who threw his hat in the ring for CM’s post earlier, asserted that he never aspired for any posts in the party and would dedicatedly work for whatever role was assigned to him.
Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh, who had publicly aired his chief ministerial ambitions, however, avoided the media. In fact, Rao Inderjit Singh came to the venue when the legislature party meeting was already underway.
