Seven similarities between Narendra Modi and Manohar Lal Khattar

1) Prior to occupying Gujarat's chief minister office, Modi had neither administrative nor legislative experience. He was appointed chief minister and then contested as an MLA from the constituency of Rajkot West. Similarly, Manohar Lal fought legislative elections from Karnal, became an MLA and is now the chief minister of Haryana.

2) Narendra Modi started as an RSS volunteer. He remained a pracharak for a long time. Manohar Lal, too, was an RSS pracharak. In 1977, he joined the Sangh at the age of 24 and became a full-time pracharak in 1980.

3) Both Modi and Khattar are sailing in the same boat more or less, as far as their marital status is concerned. Modi got married but never led a marital life. In the same way, Khattar's life revolved around RSS. He thus never married.

4) Modi's exceptional work in the RSS was noticed, and he was transferred to BJP. Similarly, Manohar Lal Khattar was entrusted with his first BJP responsibility in 1994, after having worked for the exapnsion of RSS for 14 years.

5) Khattar's father, Harbans Lal Khattar was a shopkeeper. Narendra Modi's father too used to run a tea stall.

6) Since the initial days in BJP, Narendra Modi worked as an organisational secretary. In 2000 and 2004, Khattar too held the same post for the BJP in Haryana.

7) When Modi was elected as the Gujarat chief minister, he wasn't favoured by the local leaders of the state. He was coronated by the party high command (Read: LK Advani). Khattar too was dubbed as a non-impressive leader belonging to a Punjabi community in minority. He was deemed an "outsider" for Karnal by other Haryana leaders. But owing to the high command's (Read: Shah and Modi) blessings, all other prominent contestants such as Krishna Pal Gurjar, Ramvilas Sharma, etc got clearly sidelined.

(Translated from Hindi by Radhika Sharma.)