Uttarakhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat resigns

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat quit late Friday night, barely four months after a controversial tenure, and amid uncertainty over his election to the state assembly within stipulated six months.

Rawat, a Lok Sabha member from Pauri Garhwal, drove down to the Raj Bhawan and handed over his resignation to Governor Baby Rani Maurya after a series of meetings in Delhi with the top party leadership including Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President J P Nadda.

Rawat, who was sworn in as the chief minister on March 10, has had one of the shortest tenures – 114 days – in office.

“I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and J P Nadda for the opportunity they gave me,” Rawat told reporters outside the Raj Bhawan in Dehradun.

Uttarakhand BJP chief Madan Kaushik announced that the chief minister had resigned due to a Constitutional tangle and the BJP Legislature Party is scheduled to meet at 3:00 pm on Saturday to elect Rawat’s successor.

BJP leaders Dhan Singh Rawat, Bansidhar Bhagat, Pushkar Dhami and Ritu Khanduri were being talked about as possible successors to Rawat.

Senior BJP leaders Narendra Singh Tomar and Dushyant Kumar Gautam were reaching Dehradun on Saturday to oversee proceedings.

Rawat was sounded out about the legal difficulties in getting him elected to the state assembly within the stipulated six month period from his appointment as chief minister. The Election Commission had deferred conduct of bypolls due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Section 151A of the Representation of Peoples’ Act, the Election Commission need not hold bye-elections if the vacancies in assembly seats occurred less than a year before the end of the term of the assembly. Two seats in the Uttarakhand Assembly – Gangotri and Haldwani – are vacant.

Rawat’s exit has brought under the spotlight the BJP’s inability to provide a stable government in Uttarakhand where it had won a thumping majority in 2017.

Since the formation of the state in 2000, the BJP has formed government thrice – 2000, 2007 and 2017. During the interim government from 2000-02, BJP had two chief ministers Nityanand Swami and Bhagat Singh Koshiyari.

In 2007 Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri took office but was replaced with Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in 2009. However, Khanduri made a comeback in 2011.

In 2017, Trivendra Singh Rawat was sworn in as the chief minister but he had to quit in March due to the controversy over organising the Kumbh Mela amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

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