Khattar meets BJP chief Amit Shah amid clamour for his resignation

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 17

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar met Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Friday amid growing chorus for his resignation over alarming spike in rape cases in the state.

Sources in the party have dismissed speculations that the meeting was over spiralling rate of rapes and “deteriorating law and order situation in the state”, instead calling it a routine meeting over appointments to boards and corporations.

Also discussed at the meeting was Shah’s scheduled February visit, the sources said, dismissing talks of anger on the “ground level” against Khattar. The sources added that the party’s leadership was satisfied with how Khattar was handling the situation.

However, despite these assurances, some in the party remain sceptical, believing that the recent rape incidents are bound to have left the state shaken and could affect the party’s chances in assembly elections in 2019.

Significantly, this was not the first time Khattar’s handling of state affairs was called to question: the state government was severely critcised for its handling of the violence that followed Sirsa Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s conviction in rape cases last year. The violence left more than 40 people dead— most of them the Dera chief’s followers.  

With Haryana assembly elections less than two years away, the party leadership has a narrow window to take conciliatory measures. Although BJP leaders claim that those demanding Khattar’s resignation have political motives, it remains to be seen whether the beleaguered chief minister can tide over the current political crisis with ease.

Opposition and activists have called for his dismissal over alarming rise in rape cases in Haryana. 

Four rape cases have reported in the state in less than a week, leaving the state shaken.

A 15-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in Jind on Friday, leaving her private parts mutilated and her liver ruptured—an incident that eerily harked back to December 2012 rape case of a 23-year-old paramedic in Delhi.

Two men were arrested on Monday on charges of raping and murdering an 11-year-old Dalit girl in Panipat. Also on Monday, a 50-year-old man was arrested for a brutal sexual assault on a minor girl.

Four men have been accused of gangraping a 22-year-old woman in a moving car in Faridabad on Tuesday.