Manohar Lal Khattar, the first chief minister of Haryana and Lok Sabha MP from Karnal, was appointed Union Cabinet Minister for Power and Urban Affairs on Monday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi assigned portfolios to his Union council of ministers.
In the recent Lok Sabha election, Khattar defeated Congress party’s Divyanshu Budhiraja. The 70-year-old contested parliamentary elections for the first time after serving as chief minister from October 26, 2014, until his resignation on March 12, 2024.
Khattar joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1977 and became a full-time pracharak (worker) in 1980, serving in this role for fourteen years before moving to the BJP in 1994.
When the party nominated Khattar for the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, he resigned as MLA from the Karnal Assembly constituency, making way for his successor and the party’s state president, Nayab Saini.
Khattar made his electoral debut in 2014 and was elected to the Haryana Legislative Assembly from the Karnal constituency. He also served as the chairman of the BJP’s Haryana Election Campaign Committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections.
During a public gathering in Gurugram on March 11, Prime Minister Modi spoke about his friendship with Khattar, recalling their motorcycle rides in Haryana and their work together for the RSS.
Khattar comes from an agricultural background, with his family settling in Haryana’s Rohtak district after arriving from Pakistan post-Partition. He was born in Nindana, Rohtak, in 1954.
During his first stint as chief minister, Khattar faced criticism over his handling of the February 2016 Jat quota stir, which resulted in widespread violence and arson across the state. This was followed by violent incidents in 2017 after Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape by a court in Panchkula.
