ON THE FRONT FOOT
AS THE JAN ASHIRWAD YATRA SHOWS, HARYANA CHIEF MINISTER MANOHAR LAL KHATTAR IS ON A ROLL AHEAD OF THE ASSEMBLY ELECTION NEXT MONTH
The adulation is manifest. As the grizzled chief minister leans out of his election campaign rath and chants his trademark “Haryana ek, Haryanvi ek (One Haryana for all Haryanvis)” line, hundreds jostle to shake hands with him. The socalled rath is in fact a massive outfitted bus equipped with a lift that takes him to the top to address bigger crowds.
The 15-day, 3,000 km Jan Ashirwad yatra of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, which wound through the state’s 90 assembly constituencies, will surely leave a lasting impression. With Haryana going to the polls in October, Khattar had launched the yatra to showcase his achievements and seek the blessings of the people—hence jan ashirwad.
As the rath enters Elanabad, a small town in Sirsa district, Khattar climbs to the top to address the crowd. They are effusive, though Khattar is no great orator. The chief minister sticks to his showcase themes—how he curbed corruption in the government departments, freed the state of the evils of caste politics. “In the last election, the BJP won only one assembly segment out of nine in the Sirsa Lok Sabha seat. Yet my government never discriminated against Sirsa, we have brought development to the area. You must now rise above caste and regional considerations,” he says. As the people cheer, Karnal MP Sanjay Bhatia, who is in charge of the yatra, bellows over the din: “This appeal of oneness by the chief minister has broken decades
of caste- and region-based politics of favouritism and discrimination.” Khattar himself later says he was overwhelmed by the response to the yatra. “I must have shaken hands with at least one lakh people in these 15 days,” he told india today.
On the evidence of the yatra, Khattar’s popularity is widespread and draws on his clean image. Omprakash Yadav, a marginal farmer in Jodhka village of Sirsa tehsil, is impressed. “He listens to everyone... he has sincerely tried to end corruption,” he says.
Not far away, Suresh Punia, a Dalit marginal farmer and his two collegegoing daughters, Radha and Ravina, gush. “He clamped down on corruption and casteism. He wants justice for everyone,” says Ravina. Yadav points to how, in the past one year, as many as 22 youths from the village have got government jobs. And they belong to all castes, from Dalit to Kamboj to even the Jats who were earlier often accused of cornering a majority of the jobs. Says Yadav: “All of them got in without paying a single rupee [in bribes, which is the norm]. This is a feat in itself.”
Khattar’s transformation, from being rated an honest but weak administrator, to his current dominant position, took some time coming. The chief minister himself puts it all down to “a matter of perception”. He says, “You will be surprised to know that when I was organisation secretary of the Haryana BJP unit, party workers thought I was too strict. People used to fear meeting me. When I became chief minister, I wilfully set out to change my style of working.”
Much of this ‘weak’ perception was created by the Jat reservation riots and
Khattar’s image change, from an honest but weak administrator to his current dominant position, took some time. The CM puts it down to “a matter of perception”