From RSS worker to Union minister, ex-Haryana CM Khattar begins new innings

From being an RSS worker once to being hand-picked as chief minister in 2014 to being replaced with his confidante ten years later, 70-year-old Manohar Lal Khattar has seen it all. He joined the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh as a permanent member in 1977 and stayed with it for 17 years before he was made a member of the BJP in 1994. In 2014, he became the MLA for the first time and was tapped to become the chief minister of Haryana by the BJP. Ten years later, in March 2024, he was replaced by his confidante Nayab Singh Saini, to allow him a chance to become a Member of Parliament. Contesting his first Lok Sabha polls from Karnal, Khattar defeated Congress's Divyanshu Budhiraja by an impressive margin of over 2.35 lakh votes. According to some accounts, Khattar is considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who he worked with in the 1990s in party organisation. Khattar, a bachelor, worked for almost 40 years as an RSS pracharak. In 1996, Khattar started working with Modi, wh