The State BJP is under pressure to declare its candidate to contest against Chief Minister Harish Rawat, without delay. By-elections are due for three Assembly seats - Doiwala, Someshwar and Dharchula.
Sources say former Cabinet Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat may challenge CM Rawat in Doiwala if the CM chooses to contest from this seat and former State BJP president Bachi Singh Rawat or former State Cabinet Minister Prakash Pant may be fielded against the CM in Dharchula seat if he plans to contest
from there.
The two seats - Doiwala and Someshwar - were vacated by BJP MlAs Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Ajay Tamta after becoming members of the lok Sabha in the recently-held parliamentary elections.
It is widely expected that the Chief Minister may contest the by-election from Doiwala Assembly constituency. To assess the ground situation, the State Government had reportedly conducted a survey by the State Intelligence Agency and also convened a meeting with local Congress leaders to gauge the pulse of the people in which CM Rawat received negative feedback about his winnability from there.
There are reports that CM Rawat, who is desperately looking for a safer seat to become member of the Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha, managed to persuade Congress MlA Harish Dhami to vacate his seat to pay the way for CM Rawat at Gairsain, where a special session of the Vidhan Sabha was organised during June 9 to 11. Although, it is still not clear from which seat
CM Rawat would contest the election.
In this perspective, the CM may contest election from Doiwala and Dharchula as well. If he wins both the seats then he would again resign from Dharchula and will return it to Ex-MlA Dhami.
The CM may also allow the Vijay Bahuguna faction to field its candidate. Recently, ex-CM Vijay Bahuguna along with MlA Subodh Uniyal, who lost PCC president's race to newly-appointed chief Kishore Upadhayaya, met Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi.
During the meeting they reportedly apprised her that during the Vijay Bahuguna regime the then Union Cabinet Minister Harish Rawat had managed to place his confidant into Cabinet, grabbed the Speaker and Rajya Sabha seats as well. Now Rawat has become the Chief Minister of the State and managed to appoint his faction leader Kishore Upadhyaya as the State PCC president. And that with this appointment, MlAs were severely disappointed.
Sources also said that after the disclosure that CM Rawat wants to contest election from both the Assembly constituencies of Doiwala and Dharchula, the party high command, which had appointed him as the CM by removing the then CM Vijay Bahguna, is in two minds.
It is also learnt that three names, Heera Singh Bisht, Shoorveer Singh Sajwan and SP Singh are doing the rounds for the Doiwala Assembly seat in the power corridors. Sajwan and Singh are known as loyal to CM Rawat. Ex-CM Bahuguna may support Bisht at the last moment.
For the Someshwar seat, which was vacated by BJP MlA Ajay Tamta, two names, Rajesh Arya and Mohan Ram Arya, are being floated. The Congress may field their ex- MP Pradeep Tamta for the seat.