A week goes by, battle still brews to pick Uttarakhand's new chief minister

It’s been a week since the BJP won the Uttarakhand assembly polls but the suspense over who will lead its new government has continued to keep the saffron party’s newly-elected MLAs on edge.

Wresting 47 of the state’s 70 assembly seats, against the Congress party’s tally of 19, the BJP broke the hill state’s two-decade-long trend of incumbent governments being voted out every election. However, the party’s current predicament over who should be named the new CM stems from another jinx that it could not break – that of incumbent chief ministers failing to retain their own seat in the polls.

Ever since the hill state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, no sitting CM – with the exception of BJP’s Bhagat Singh Koshyari in 2002 – has managed to win a re-election. On March 10, as the results of the Uttarakhand polls were declared, Pushkar Singh Dhami, who was the BJP’s surprise pick for CM in July last year, lost his Khatima seat to the Congress’s Bhuvan Kapri by a margin of 6,579 votes.

Though the BJP had gone to the polls without expressly endorsing Dhami for a second term as CM, the former MLA from Khatima was largely tipped to continue in office if the party was voted back to power. The BJP’s campaign posters across the state had images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Dhami; many hoardings stated that the incumbent CM had the “blessings of Modi”.

This messaging by the BJP was perceived as a clear endorsement for Dhami continuing as CM once the BJP returns to power. The former Khatima legislator, who had the otherwise notorious distinction of being named the third CM by the party within a period of six months since the ouster of Trivendra Singh Rawat and Tirath Singh Rawat, was also viewed more kindly by the state’s electorate.

As per the BJP’s internal assessment, despite his short term in office, Dhami had gained state-wide acceptance by pushing through some populist measures, reversing controversial decisions taken by his immediate predecessor and largely serving out a term that saw no major controversies for the ruling party.

However, with Dhami losing the polls from Khatima, a seat he had won for two consecutive terms since 2012, the BJP’s perceived eagerness to give the current caretaker CM a new term in office has hit an obvious hurdle.

Also read: CM aspirants on shaky ground, kin of former ones too

BJP insiders claim that despite his defeat, Dhami has still not been entirely elbowed out of the race for chief ministership. A confidant of Koshyari, one of the BJP’s tallest leaders in the state who is now the governor of Maharashtra, Dhami, said BJP sources, may still be given the top job.

Six party legislators have expressed their willingness to vacate their newly-won seats for Dhami, should he be made the CM again. If given another term as CM, Dhami will have to seek re-election from a constituency within six months of assuming charge. Among the newly-elected BJP MLAs who have come forward to offer their seats to Dhami are Kailash Gahtodi from Champawat and Suresh Gadiya from Kapkot, both loyalists of Koshyari.

Sources say Koshyari, who was instrumental in getting Dhami his shot in electoral politics and then backed his candidature for CM last July, is also lobbying for a renewed term for the former Khatima MLA. However, there is also a strong view among a section of party leaders that a by-election within six months of the BJP winning a clear mandate “only to accommodate a CM who could not save his seat despite a wave for the party” will send out a “wrong message and cause disaffection among those who won their seats”.

A senior Uttarakhand BJP MLA told The Federal that this line of argument – of avoiding a by-election soon – also seeks to serve another interest of a faction of party MLAs. “With Dhami losing from Khatima, it’s now an open race for the CM’s post… besides half a dozen MLAs, at least three of our MPs as well as former CM Trivendra Rawat, are all lobbying for the post. If the party decides that the CM will be chosen from among the sitting MLAs, people like Ramesh Pokhriyal, Anil Baluni (both sitting MPs) and Rawat will automatically be out of the race.”

Though BJP sources insist that the party will ultimately go with “whoever is endorsed by Modi”, at least in Dehradun, the competition among CM aspirants seems to have no bounds. The party had dispatched Union minister Pralhad Joshi and national general secretary Kailash Vijaywargiya to Dehradun ahead of the poll results to have a preliminary round of discussion with the newly-elected MLAs.

However, Dhami lost the polls and Vijaywargiya and Joshi returned to Delhi, leaving the question of who will be made the new CM, open-ended.

The BJP then decided to send Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Piyush Goyal to Dehradun to speak to the legislative party but then, on March 14, Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Meenakshi Lekhi were named as the observers for Uttarakhand.

Singh and Lekhi have now been having discussions with the Uttarakhand BJP MLAs and party leaders individually. A meeting of the party’s central leadership to end the stalemate is also expected later today (March 17), though a section of party leaders in Dehradun claimed that a final decision may only be announced post Holi.

Also read: BJP believes Modi factor will work again in Uttarakhand Assembly polls

A state BJP leader told The Federal that MLAs lobbying for the CM’s post include Chaubattakhal MLA Satpal Maharaj, Srinagar MLA Dhan Singh Rawat, Hardwar MLA Madan Kaushik, Mussoorie MLA Ganesh Joshi, Narendra Nagar MLA Subodh Uniyal, Rishikesh MLA Prem Chand Aggarwal, Someshwar MLA Rekha Arya and Kotdwar MLA Ritu Khanduri.

Maharaj, a political heavyweight from Garhwal and one of the multiple-term lawmakers who had defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2014, is said to enjoy the backing of BJP’s ideological parent, the RSS. Sources close to the Chaubattakhal MLA told The Federal when other Congress imports into the BJP such as Yashpal Arya and Harak Singh Rawat were deserting the saffron party ahead of the 2022 polls, he had remained committed to the BJP and also worked hard for the party’s candidates in other constituencies of the Garhwal region.

Dhan Singh Rawat, also a leader from Garhwal, had lost out to Dhami when the BJP chose to bench then CM Tirath Singh Rawat last July. Dhan Singh, along with Kaushik, Joshi, Arya (the lone legislator in this list from the state’s Kumaon region) and Khanduri have been BJP members all their political life and are learned to be opposed to giving Maharaj, a Congress import, the top executive’s role.

BJP sources say the party also has to weigh in crucial regional and caste equations in making its choice of the CM. Garhwal has traditionally been a BJP stronghold and constitutes a bloc of 41 seats in the 70-member Uttarakhand assembly. The BJP had won 34 of these seats in the 2017 polls but this tally from the region dropped to 29 seats in the recent polls, with its candidates winning at least nine of these with margins lower than 5,000 votes. Dhan Singh too won his Srinagar seat by a slender margin of just 587 votes against the Congress’s state unit chief Ganesh Godiyal.

Some BJP leaders claim that the party’s close shave in Garhwal was because of a perception among voters that the BJP was taking support of the Garhwal voter for granted. Both Trivendra Rawat and Tirath Rawat who were unceremoniously ousted as CM are leaders from Garhwal, as is Pokhriyal who was sacked as Union HRD minister last year. Dhami, in contrast, comes from the Kumaon region.

The case of Ritu Khanduri is equally interesting. Her father and former CM BC Khanduri had lost the 2012 elections from the Kotdwar seat in Garhwal to the Congress’s Surendra Negi. In the recent polls, the BJP had named Ritu its candidate from Kotdwar at the last minute – she had been elected MLA from the neighbouring Yamkeshwar seat in 2017 – and she was pitted against Negi again in an electoral battle that most BJP insiders, including some of her close aides, claimed was difficult for her to win.

However, Ritu proved the sceptics wrong and wrested Kotdwar from Negi, albeit with a narrow margin of 3,687 votes.

Sources close to her said that in her bid to be named CM, Ritu is banking on the fact that Uttarakhand has never had a woman CM, despite a steadily increasing participation of women – higher than the men in the past few Assembly and Lok Sabha elections – in the voting process and the BJP’s own pitch of women empowerment.

Her challenge, however, is two-fold. First, the rivalry between her father, now hardly active in Uttarakhand politics and distant from the BJP’s central leadership, and Koshyari is legendary. Many still believe that Khanduri Sr had lost his re-election bid in 2012 because of sabotage by Koshyari loyalists. Second, Ritu’s brother Manish Khanduri, had defected to the Congress ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and has been a bitter critic of the BJP ever since.