Ending days of speculation, Rawat resigns 9 days before completion of four years in office
After days of political turmoil and speculation, Trivendra Singh Rawat submitted his resignation from the post of Uttarakhand’s chief minister on Tuesday to the governor Baby Rani Maurya. Accepting his resignation, the governor asked Rawat to function as the officiating chief minister till the next chief minister is appointed and assumes charge.
The resignation of the outgoing chief minister comes after days of political turmoil and uncertainty. The turmoil came out in the open on March 6 when the budget session of the assembly at the summer capital Gairsain was adjourned sine die earlier than it was slated to conclude. Apart from Rawat, the cabinet ministers and BJP MLAs were rushed to Dehradun to attend the core group meeting which was also attended by central observer Raman Singh and the party’s state in-charge Dushyant Kumar Gautam among others. After that, Rawat, some cabinet ministers, MLAs and party leaders reached Delhi separately.
Though BJP state president Banshidhar Bhagat continued to state that no leadership change was about to happen, the inner workings of the party machinery continued to progress in another direction. When asked about the reason for his resignation, Rawat said that it was a joint decision and that one would have to ask Delhi for a better answer. According to political observers, Rawat had undertaken various effective and proactive measures during his tenure. However, some of these very measures made him unpopular with the MLAs due to steps like implementation of the Transfer Act and his lack of political correctness. Rawat’s action against corruption also proved in some ways to be detrimental to the the usual politics. More recently, his decision to declare Gairsain the third commissionerate of Uttarakhand merging districts of both Garhwal and Kumaon without consulting public representatives from the regions concerned and the lathi charge on people at Diwalikhal when they were protesting in support of their pending demand for widening the Ghat-Nandprayag road worked against Rawat.
Further, he was also found to be unpopular in internal surveys and the failure of the state government to keep the bureaucracy under control also worked against him. Another major reason for the change in Rawat’s fortunes was the inefficiency of his team to maintain his image and interaction with the media and public which proved severely detrimental in times when accessibility and public perception matter a lot.
Wednesday, 10 March 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
