Dera violence: CM Khattar in safe zone but only till Monday

New Delhi: Haryana might have turned into a battleground due to state government's shocking failure in containing violence erupted following the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case, but Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar is most unlikely to face any action for the same.

Soon after Dera chief was held guilty of raping a girl by a Special CBI court on Thursday, his followers disrupted peace in Panchkula district of Haryana, and soon violence prevailed across other districts as well as adjoining states. During the course of expressing displeasure over the court's order, those agitated supporters of Dera chief killed over 30 people and left more than 250 injured.

Haryana and Punjab were the most affected states with a lot of loss of public and private properties.

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Since the violence broke out, CM Khattar started drawing flak for his inability to tackle such situation even when the Punjab and Haryana High Court had already warned his government of possible disruption of peace.

The situation has been brought under control after intervention from the Centre, but still Khattar seems to be in the safe zone as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top leadership is satisfied with their CM, who possibly failed to ensure adequate security arrangements because of his inexperience of holding any administrative post before holding the CM's chair.

Khattar might have evaded the threat of losing his chair, but the coming Monday is going to be a testing day for him as the Centre has already warned him to ensure safety of the people from the violent supporters of the self-styled godman on the day when the special CBI court will award sentence to the 'rapist Baba'.

All the opposition parties across the country have united over the issue asking Khattar to take moral responsibility of the violence and immediately step down. They, however, have not yet managed to move the BJP government at the Centre, which enjoys clear majority in Lok Sabha, as Haryana BJP chief and party general secretary Anil Jain was heard praising the state government, with which could be described as a very insensitive statement towards the people died in violence.

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"No violence was reported before the arrest of Ram Rahim, and the state government did a great job in containing the violence within just 2-3 hours. The people who died were themselves part of the violent mob," he said.

He further said, "The BJP top brass hasn’t called Khattar for any meeting as his presence in the state is very important at such a crucial time. Khattar, however, will have to ensure that no more violence takes place in the state."

According to the sources, BJP, which allegedly shares close bonding with Dera Sacha Sauda chief, was itself unwilling to take strict action against Dera supporters.