Haryana BJP president and Kurukshetra MP Nayab Singh Saini, 53, will take oath as the new chief minister in Chandigarh at 5pm on Tuesday.

On a day of fast-paced political developments, Saini was unanimously elected as the legislature group leader at a meeting of all 41 BJP MLAs at Haryana Niwas in the afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Manohar Lal Khattar submitted his resignation as chief minister to governor Bandaru Dattatreya with the party’s alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) falling through.

“The new Haryana government will be sworn in at Raj Bhawan this evening,” Karnal BJP MP Sanjay Bhatia said after the MLAs’ meeting that was also attended by state party in-charge Biplab Kumar Deb, observers Arjun Munda, who is a Union minister, and party national general secretary Tarun Chugh and former Haryana BJP chief and Rajya Sabha member Subhash Barala.

Saini, who hails from other backward classes (OBC) community, is set to become CM barely six months after he replaced Om Prakash Dhankar from the powerful Jat community leader as the state BJP president.

Saini, who became MLA for the first time in 2014 and remained a minister, is considered a confidant of Khattar.

When Saini became MP in 2019, the BJP had not only bagged all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana but the saffron party candidates had also won with massive margins.

His appointment comes at a time when the BJP, which has been in power in Haryana since 2014, is aiming for a hat-trick.