Karnal: BJP veteran Khattar takes on Congress’ youth leader

TWO months after the BJP replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as Haryana chief minister, the 70year-old leader and former RSS 'pracharak' is preparing for another innings -- to enter the Lok Sabha for the first time.

Though 19 candidates are in the fray from the Karnal seat, the contest is mainly between Khattar and Haryana Youth Congress president Divyanshu Budhiraja (30).

Karnal is an agricultural-industrial district in the northcentral part of Haryana and is also famous for its Basmati rice. It is said to have been founded by Raja Karna who was one of the main characters in the epic Mahabharata.

In October 2014, when the BJP came to power in Haryana on its own strength for the first time, Khattar, a first-time MLA from Karnal, was made the chief minister.

Nine-and-a-half years later, the party handpicked Khattar's protege and Kurukshetra MP Nayab Saini to replace him as chief minister.

The Karnal assembly seat, vacated by Khattar following his resignation as MLA, is being contested by Saini in the bypoll, which will be held along with voting for 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana in the sixth phase of elections on May 25.

While Khattar is banking on the development works carried out by the "double-engine" government and giving a transparent administration, his rival Budhiraja says the BJP may have brought Saini as CM, but they cannot hide their "failures" of the past 10 years.