Haryana CM Nayab Saini’s Cabinet to take oath today

Chandigarh, March 19

The Nayab Singh Saini government in Haryana will carry out its first cabinet expansion later Tuesday with sources saying that six to seven MLAs were likely to be inducted.

Saini and five ministers were inducted into the cabinet last week.

When asked about the cabinet expansion, former minister Anil Vij, who last week skipped Saini’s swearing-in ceremony, said, “I have no information.” He, however, asserted that he was not upset.

Vij has apparently been upset with the party not keeping him in the loop when they decided to make Saini the chief minister by removing Manohar Lal Khattar. He said he came to know about it only in the BJP MLAs’ meeting here last week in which Saini’s name was announced.

“It was not in my knowledge that the chief minister of our state was being changed. This came as a bombshell to me that the chief minister was being changed,” Vij told reporters here.

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Saini, while interacting with reporters after paying obeisance at Nada Sahib Gurdwara in Panchkula, said that Vij is “our respected leader and we have been regularly getting guidance from him”.

Accompanied by Haryana Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta and the BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Ambala Banto Kataria, the Haryana chief minister is scheduled to visit Karnal on Tuesday where BJP president J P Nadda will kick off the party’s campaign for the Lok Sabha polls in Haryana.

About Nadda’s programme too, Vij said he has no information.

Notably, six-time MLA Vij had walked out of the legislature party meeting where Saini was unanimously named the chief minister-designate.

Vij, who held the home portfolio in the Manohar Lal Khattar government, was often at loggerheads with the chief minister. He was earlier said to be “upset” over being “ignored” by the BJP.

Replying to questions from reporters here, he said, “I have said earlier too that I am a dedicated worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party. I am never upset with anything. Whatever I have to say, I say it clearly,” he asserted.

With Chief Minister Saini taking out a roadshow which crossed Ambala Cantonment, the Assembly segment represented by Vij, the former state home minister said, “Had Saini come to my residence, I would have offered him tea.”

When asked about Khattar’s earlier comment that Vij gets upset easily but later becomes okay too, the former Haryana minister said, “I don’t know on what basis he said so.”

To a question about whether he wanted to be included in the Saini Cabinet, he replied, “This is a hypothetical question”.

Those who might get inducted into the Saini government include Kamal Gupta, an MLA from Hisar who was also a minister in the Khattar cabinet, according to sources. The others include Abhe Singh Yadav, Seema Trikha, Subhash Sudha and Bishamber Singh Balmiki.

Haryana can have a maximum of 14 ministers, including the chief minister.

At present, the Haryana Cabinet has five ministers — four from the BJP and one Independent — apart from the chief minister.

In a surprise move last week, the BJP replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with OBC leader Saini as Haryana’s chief minister in a swift switch in the state, just weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Saini, who is the party’s state unit president, was sworn in as chief minister a week ago along with five ministers hours after the resignation of Khattar. The Saini government won the trust vote in a special session of the state assembly last Wednesday.