Newsmaker: Political symbolism around Subhash Barala

The most important thing was to break the back of INLD's Jat base in Haryana

When the party won the assembly elections, the chief minister was selected ignoring conventional parameters like caste and region. M L Khattar is a Punjabi, a community that is small in number, from a caste that is politically insignificant. What impressed the central leadership about Khattar were his ideas about administration and his capacity for mobilisation, something Narendra Modi had seen for himself in Gujarat when Khattar oversaw rehabilitation after the Bhuj earthquake.

However, there was a problem. Haryana has a powerful voice in the state’s Jats. Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a Jat, had been CM for two terms. Abhimanyu, a