Manohar Lal Khattar- Meet the new Power, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister

Former Haryana Chief Minister and BJP veteran from Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, has been appointed as the Power minister in Modi 3.0. Along with Khattar, the six-time North Goa MP Shripad Yesso Naik, will serve as the Minister of State for the portfolio. Along with the power ministry, Khattar has also been assigned the key portfolio of Housing and Urban Affairs in the new Cabinet. After the change of guard in Haryana in March 2024, it was expected, looking at his long experience in public service that ML Khattar would move to Delhi after the Lok Sabha elections.

After resigning from the CM post Khattar contested from Karnal constituency and secured a victory with a substantial margin of 2,32,577 votes. Born on May 5, 1954, in Nindana village of Rohtak district, Manohar Lal Khattar spent his early life in rural Haryana. Notably, before entering politics, Khattar was associated with the Sangh Parivar for many years. Khattar joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1977 and became a full-time pracharak (worker) in 1980. Later he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1994.  Known as a loyal party man and committed to the ideology, Khattar climbed the political ladder, becoming the party's national executive member.  This is when working as a grass-root party worker, Khattar worked with Narendra Modi who spent many years in the state overseeing the party’s work.

Recalling his old days with Manohar Lal Khattar, PM Modi during the inauguration of the Dwarka expressway in Haryana in March 2023, said, “Manohar Lal and I are old friends. He used to have a motorcycle which he used to ride and I used to sit at the back of the bike. We used to often take rides on motorcycles in Haryana.”

 During his two stints as the Chief Minister of Haryana, Khattar took several important decisions and initiatives that transformed the lives of “Desi” Haryanvis. Khattar government introduced the 'Parivar Pehchan Patra' scheme, under which the Haryana government issues every family a unique family identity. It led to transparent and fast delivery of services which made lives easier for lakhs of Haryanvis living in villages. Khattar is also credited with introducing pre-qualification conditions for the candidates contesting panchayat elections and ensuring transparent recruitment. Khattar’s corruption-free rule in Haryana is also hailed for the improvement in the sex ratio, an issue which particularly earned a bad name to Haryana.

Khattar government during his nearly 10-year tenure specially focused on backward regions of Haryana. Villages of South Haryana that had never seen regular water supply got permanent tap connections and regular water supply under the fair delivery of schemes like “Har Ghar Jal se Nal”. For the villagers used to a 4-hour electricity pattern in the day, 24-hour electricity was a distant dream for them. Khattar government made sure the 24-hour electricity facility reached every village of Haryana.

Silencing the critics who attacked his 10-year tenure after the change of guard in the BJP government, Khattar had said “The reality is when I had served as the chief minister for eight to eight-and-a-half years, I 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”. Sworn into the new cabinet, the “Tau” of Haryana is all set to begin his new innings as parliamentarian and cabinet minister. The team of “The Haryana Story” congratulates and wishes good luck to the new Power minister of India.