New Delhi: Trivendra Singh Rawat resigned as the chief minister of Uttarakhand Tuesday, following a meeting with party president J.P. Nadda Monday night.
Rawat met Governor Baby Rani Maurya at Raj Bhavan and submitted his resignation.
Rawat, who was scheduled to complete four years in office on 18 March, was summoned to Delhi amid mounting pressure from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership to replace him ahead of the assembly elections due next year.
Rawat now becomes the second chief minister, after Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel, under the Modi-Shah regime who has been asked to resign midway of tenure. With this, Rawat joins the list of Uttarakhand CMs who have been unable to complete their term. The only Uttarakhand CM who completed five years in office was late Narayan Dutt Tiwari (2002-07).
On Monday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief Nadda and party’s national general secretary B.L. Santhosh attended a meeting at the Parliament building to discuss the political crisis in the state. Rawat too met Nadda late at night and returned to Dehradun Tuesday.
Currently, the names in the race to replace Rawat are Ajay Bhatt, Dhan Singh Rawat and Anil Baluni.
‘Golden opportunity of my life’
Shortly after submitting his resignation as the chief minister, Rawat held a press conference and thanked the BJP leadership for providing him an opportunity to serve as the chief minister for four years.
“I have been in politics for quite some time, whether as an RSS worker or with the BJP. I could have never imagined that the party would honour me with such a big responsibility,” he said.
“The BJP gave me an opportunity to serve the dev bhoomi of Uttarakhand for four years. This was the golden opportunity of my life. The party has now decided that the opportunity to serve as CM should be given to someone else,” said Rawat.
He also said his resignation is a collective decision. “There was an internal party discussion and a consensus emerged that someone else must now be given the responsibility of the state”.
He also said that the legislative party meeting will be held at 10 am Wednesday.
‘Uninspiring leadership’
According to party sources, Rawat was summoned by the central leadership to Delhi after two central party observers — former Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh and national general secretary Dushyant Gautam — visited Dehradun Saturday to take feedback from all stakeholders.
The observers also met the MLAs, ministers, and held a meeting with RSS leaders in Uttarakhand. The observers submitted a report to Nadda Monday.
In their report, the two observers had raised concerns over the state of affairs in Uttarakhand and said the CM has been failing to inspire the MLAs and is losing his grip over the state. Not only this, many of the MLAs had termed his leadership “uninspiring” too. Many of them had also raised concerns over his style of functioning.
The observers had pointed out the MLAs resentment with Rawat’s style of functioning and his lack of control over the administration. Some of the MLAs had also said that his “uninspiring” leadership had the potential of damaging the party’s prospects in the 2022 assembly elections.
According to a source, the party, learning from its past experience, did not wish to take any chance. “Despite knowing the unpopularity of Raghubar Das he was not removed and we lost the election. In Uttarakhand, ‘Nishank’ was removed and B.C. Khanduri was made the CM, but we lost by a slim margin due to internal sabotage. So all these issues were taken into consideration,” he said.
The BJP won the 2017 assembly elections in Uttarakhand with a huge majority of 57 seats and Rawat took over as the chief minister.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
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