Had suggested change of guard in Haryana a year back to Modi, says ex-CM Khattar

Manohar Lal Khattar said the Congress leaders have been spreading falsehood about the leadership change in Haryana.

Chandigarh: BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday said the decision to replace him as the chief minister of Haryana with Nayab Singh Saini was not a sudden one and he had suggested this to Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than a year ago.

Khattar said the Congress leaders have been spreading falsehood about the leadership change in Haryana.

"The reality is when I had served as the chief minister for eight to eight-and-a-half years, I myself told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that in any person's life - if he hands over the baton to anyone on his own will, there cannot be a matter of greater happiness. I had said this to him about myself more than a year ago", Khattar said.

"In January (2024), he (PM) told me whether I was firm on what I had said to which I replied in the affirmative", he added.

Throwing more light on the sequence of events leading to a change of guard in Haryana, Khattar said that there was a programme in Gurugram on March 11 in which Prime Minister Modi had come.

"In that programme, Modi ji shared some old memories and said he and I used to ride on a motorcycle together several years back and travel between Rohtak and Gurugram. And these roads were not like this as they are today and a lot of development has been undertaken", said Khattar.

"Manohar Lal aur hum toh saath hai he, aaj aapka bhavishya bhi saath hai", said Khattar, about what Modi had indicated about Saini.

"At that time in the programme, our state president Nayab Singh Saini was sitting with me", he said.

After getting green signal from the leadership and being satisfied that the party had agreed to what he had proposed more than a year ago, Khattar said that he summoned a cabinet meeting in Chandigarh in the eve of the same day (March 11).

"On March 12 morning, I resigned as the chief minister and as the MLA the very next day. A meeting of the party MLAs was summoned where Saini was elected. On March 13, our government won the trust vote", he said.

Khattar further said that the Muslims are more secure under the government of Prime Minister Modi than they were during the Congress' rule.

"Modi ji ki sarkar mein Muslim jitna surakshit hai, kabhi Congress ki sarkar mein Muslim surakshit nahi raha. (The Muslims are more secure under Modi ji's government than they were during Congress' rule)", he said addressing an election rally in Firozpur Jhirka in Nuh district in favour of BJP's Gurugram Lok Sabha candidate and Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh.

Targeting the Congress, Khattar said, "During our youth days in the 1980s and 1990s, we used to hear news about riots and fights in Meerut, Aligarh, Delhi, Kanpur and elsewhere every other day. But now there is no Hindu-Muslim fights in the country". He further added that even if any issue arises today, it is amicably resolved.

Referring to Article 370 which bestowed special status on the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, he said the people there have benefitted after the abrogation of this Article.

Pointing fingers at the Congress, he alleged the grand old party uses minorities for vote bank.

Talking about the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said it is not a place of the Hindus alone and the members of the Muslim community are also going there.

Iqbal Ansari, one of the main plaintiffs in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, attended the consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla in January, he said.

Khattar said the Congress will try to mislead that people in the BJP and RSS are anti-Muslims.

"For 10 years, the Modi government is in power. He (Modi) was the CM of Gujarat before that. There have been BJP governments in the state and elsewhere. We have never discriminated on any ground", he said.

Khattar appealed to the voters of Mewat region to vote in large numbers for the BJP's Gurugram candidate.

He claimed that even though Rao Inderjit Singh has been victorious from the Gurugram seat in past elections, the vote margin has been comparatively below expectation from Mewat and that he should be able to win by a bigger margin this time around.