Dehradun: The rumblings within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand claimed the Chief Ministership of Trivendra Singh Rawat, who quit his post on Tuesday, well a week ahead of the completion of his fourth year in the office.
In the process, he joins the list of his eight predecessors, with the exception of late Narayan Dutt Tiwari, who could not complete their full term as CM of the state. The next election in the state is due next year and in the last elections in 2017, the BJP had routed the Congress, winning 57 seats in the 70-member Uttarakhand House.
Rawat’s fate appeared to be sealed when he rushed to New Delhi to meet BJP president JP Nadda on Monday, after the party’s central leadership sent senior leaders Dushyant Gautam and Raman Singh to Dehradun to take stock of the simmering discontent among the BJP legislators over the working of Rawat, last weekend.
Rawat, 60, today handed over his resignation to Governor Baby Rani Maurya and state higher education minister Dhan Singh Rawat’s name figures as his likely replacement who is an MLA from Srinagar in Pauri district of the state.
The ousted CM, Rawat, is likely to be given a role in the party’s central team, as the BJP, in a firefighting mode, said the change in leadership could not be seen as his failure. Gautam, a national general secretary of the BJP, stated: “The party decides who will work where. In his case, since he has the experience and has worked at the Centre before, the party thought it would be more beneficial for the party to have him work at the central level.”
– global bihari bureau
