His political opponents seem to have upper hand
Chief Minister Harish Rawat managed his appeal well to reach out to the people by way of offering many popular schemes and conducting frequent visits of different parts of the hill State, but he completed two months of his tenure as Chief Minister of Uttarakhand with a psychological disadvantage over his political opponents.
On the one hand, Chief Minister Rawat reiterated his Government’s commitment to extend a healing touch to the victims of devastating monsoon of last year; on the other, he ended up messing things up on many fronts during his stint as head of the State Government.
For example, he took unexpectedly long time to allocate portfolios among his Cabinet colleagues, though he retained the same Cabinet that his predecessor Vijay Bahuguna was heading. And more importantly, during this very period when his ministers were moving around ‘jobless’, Chief Minister Rawat-led State Government made maximum popular announcements and did foundation stone laying ceremony in mass scale.
However, the same much-talked about portfolio allocation issue was believed to be instrumental in giving the ruling Congress Party a big blow on the political front when Pauri Garhwal strong man Satpal Maharaj bid adieu to the Congress Party accusing the State Government of ignoring the interests of the people of the Garhwal region.
But snatching the horticulture department from Amrita Rawat, wife of Satpal Maharaj, also turned to be an issue of prestige for Satpal Maharaj and State Cabinet Minister Amriat Rawat.
Though keeping in view sentiments of his Cabinet colleague Amrita Rawat in this regard, and larger political interests of his party, Chief Minister Rawat admitted the snatching of horticulture portfolio a ‘lapse’ or error of judgment on his part, this realisation came too late. By then, Satpal Maharaj, who had already shown his unwillingness to contest from Pauri Parliamentary constituency, did necessary homework to switch sides to the BJP.
Mishandling of administrative as well as political issues by Chief Minister Rawat was unexpected given his vast political experience and his understanding of administrative functioning.
These certain developments during the second half of his tenure as Chief Minister only diverted the attention of the Congress Party which had hardly recovered from leadership crisis in the mountain State, from its larger role of charting out political course for itself to fight the upcoming general elections in all five lok Sabha seats in the hill State.
Whereas the Congress Party damaged its own party interests by delaying the process of giving a formal shape to the list of candidates for Uttarakhand lok Sabha seats, it gave the Opposition BJP unknowingly an opportunity to put its house in order after open revolt by some of the party senior leaders for not giving them party tickets like Bachi Singh Rawat who was interested in contesting the lok Sabha polls from the Nainital Udham Singh Nagar parliamentary constituency.
However, at the backdrop of the big event like the upcoming general elections when much is at stake, it would be interesting to see how Chief Minister Rawat moves ahead to meet the expectations of the people striking a fine balance between the party politics and the Government.