Gurugram: Union Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh turned an official Partition Horrors Remembrance Day event in Gurugram into a stage for his grievances Friday, publicly asking BJP national president Nitin Nabin on the dais why he (Rao) had even bothered to show up if he, as the local MP, could not be included among the speakers.
The gathering included Union Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Haryana BJP chief Dr Archana Gupta.
Rao pointed to Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Bhatia, who was seated on the dais, and asked whether a similar programme in Panipat would have gone ahead without inviting Bhatia, or one in Karnal without Khattar. Panipat is Bhatia’s hometown while Khattar represents Karnal in the Lok Sabha.
The MoS said his name did not figure anywhere in the speeches at the event, and added that, had it not been a party president’s programme, he would not have been called at all.
Khattar was seated on the dais as Rao made these remarks, a moment made sharper by the two leaders’ long history of uneasy relations.
Rao also took aim at the organisers’ outreach to Gurugram’s Punjabi community, the primary audience for the day’s commemoration of Partition refugees.
He said most of the families affected by Partition had settled in Haryana rather than Punjab, and that Haryana had welcomed them, before adding, in a pointed remark to the organisers, that “taali do haath se bajti hai (it takes two to tango)”.
He noted that Haryana was the first state to have given the country a Punjabi chief minister, twice over, referring to Khattar and his successor Nayab Singh Saini, and that two of Independent India’s Army chiefs, Dalbir Singh Suhag and General Deepak Kapoor, had hailed from the state.
“People sitting here may say one of them was Haryanvi while the other was a Punjabi. But don’t forget, both Suhag and Kapoor hailed from Haryana,” he added.
He said that Dharamvir Gaba, Gurugram’s first Punjabi MLA, had won only because communities across the constituency backed him and not on the strength of the Punjabi vote alone.
Rao further said the party must bear in mind that if a Punjabi, referring to Khattar, could become the chief minister twice and another Punjabi, Gaba, could become MLA from Gurugram on four occasions, it was not solely because of the Punjabi community, but also because of the contributions of other communities.
“However, you don’t even consider inviting people like me to address the party event,” Rao said.
Nabin, in his remarks at the event, said the Nehru family had partitioned the country for power and was now working to partition society. He also questioned why the Congress had never “apologised” to Partition’s victims.
A decade of friction with Haryana’s BJP leadership
Friday’s outburst fits a pattern that has defined Rao Inderjit Singh’s relationship with the state’s BJP leadership since Manohar Lal Khattar became chief minister in 2014.
A six-time MP and Ahirwal strongman, Rao has repeatedly taken digs at Khattar, accusing him of trying to erode his hold over south Haryana.
After the BJP’s win in the 2024 assembly election, Rao said at his Rewari residence that a former chief minister, without naming Khattar, had tried to divide his camp and introduce rival leaders for a decade. He described it as an attempt to undercut 40 years of his own political work.
Party insiders have said the fight over ticket distribution in seats such as Bawal, where Khattar backed a rival candidate over a Rao loyalist, was one of several such flashpoints.
The friction did not ease after Khattar moved to the Centre and Nayab Singh Saini took over as chief minister, though Rao’s daughter Arti Singh Rao is a minister in the latter’s cabinet.
At a rally in Rewari last year, Rao told Saini directly that the BJP’s Ahirwal MLAs had helped bring the government to power and had a rightful claim on it, and that the previous chief minister had never visited the region.
Saini responded by saying his government belonged to all 2.75 crore people of the state, not any one community.
However, days after the event, Rao and his daughter Arti Singh hosted a dinner for Saini and his wife.
Rao has separately criticised Khattar’s tenure as chief minister, arguing that despite spreading development projects across the state, Khattar never became a mass leader and failed to win over the state’s Jat voters.
He has also alleged that officials from Khattar’s chief ministerial office continue to hold sway in the state administration even after Khattar became a Cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi government.
The rivalry has also spilled into policy. Earlier this year, Rao publicly opposed the Panchgram smart cities corridor project, first conceived during Khattar’s tenure, warning that farmers’ land in the Rewari-Gurugram belt could be exploited. He said he would take his objections directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In January this year, Rao wrote to CM Nayab Singh Saini, flagging environmental concerns in the Aravalli region, pointing out that public anxiety was high in Gurugram, Nuh, Rewari and Faridabad over these issues.
(Edited by Jeyasri A T)