His critics may charge him with unseating the then Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna only to be crowned as head of Uttarakhand Government about four months ago, but Chief Minister Harish Rawat now seems to be carrying forward the legacy of Bahuguna in the State.
If the then Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna is known for taking some unconventional steps like conducting a session of the State legislative Assembly at Gairsain for the first time outside the state Capital, now incumbent Rawat is also following in his footsteps by holding Cabinet meeting in Kumaon's Almora district on Thursday, June 5. This is perhaps for the first time when any State Government in Uttarakhand will be holding its Cabinet meeting outside the State Capital.
But when the then Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna announced to conduct a session of the State legislative Assembly at Gairsain soon after his becoming head of the State Government, this decision rekindled hopes amongst the people of Uttarakhand.
The citizens were of the view that by organising a session of the State legislative Assembly in a hill station like Gairsain which had been at the centre of statehood movement as a future Capital of the new hill state, the Government was trying to bring the people of the hilly region of the mountain state who are still fighting for their basic issues to the mainstream of development.
However, from the public point of view, the Assembly session at Giarsain was nothing but a token gesture on behalf of the Congress-led State Government to the people of the hill State as no credible measures came out to address the basic concerns of the citizens of Uttarakhand even after conducting the State Assembly session at Gairsain.
A matter of concern is that apart from the perennial issues like migration of people from the hilly and remote areas of the state to urban cities and other parts of the State and the country or unemployment, to name a few, basic service issues like proper drinking water arrangements or electricity to every household in the far-flung areas still remain a distant dream.
Chief Minister Rawat has admitted time and again that many districts of Uttarakhand are still lagging behind in development. So, given the opportunity, he would go to even the lower level than district headquarter to understand things of greater public interest better.
Apart from that now the State Government's decision to hold Cabinet meetings in every district in the coming days is also being seen as an attempt on the part of the Congress-led State Government to reconnect with the electorate given the poor show of the ruling party in the state in the recently-concluded lok Sabha elections. Though the Congress party lost all the five lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand this time like the Opposition BJP lost in the hill State in the previous general elections of 2009, losing the electoral battle on such a scale seems to have come as a shock for the party.
Out of the 70 Assembly constituencies in the hill State, the ruling Congress managed to win only seven assembly segments in the recently-concluded lok Sabha elections in the state. Sources maintain that the Chief Minister is only trying to regain the lost electoral ground and, more importantly, to win the trust of the common people of the Himalayan State.