The suspense building up since the day the result of the election was declared on March 11, giving a mammoth majority to the Bharatiya Janata Party, ended on Friday as the Bharatiya Janata Party picked Doiwala MlA and former Cabinet Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat as the new Chief Minister of Uttarakhand. He is all set to be sworn in as the ninth Chief Minister of Uttarakhand at Parade Ground on Saturday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party national president Amit Shah and a host of Union Ministers.
Apparently to build a consensus on the name already picked by the party top guns, the BJP high command sent two Central observers — Narendra Tomar and Saroj Pandey — along with BJP election in-charges Dhrmendra Pradhan and JP Nadda and Uttarakhand in-charge Shyam Jaju to Dehradun on Friday prior to the crucial BJP State legislature party meet. The announcement of Rawat as the person to helm the new State Government was greeted with the jubilant activists bursting crackers outside the hotel where the BJP MlAs met.
Before the meeting, the senior leaders, including Trivendra Singh Rawat, assembled at a guest house in the city. later, Rawat visited the residence of the Pithoragarh MlA Prakash Pant whose name was also doing the rounds as a CM probable. Thereafter, both reached together the venue where the party legislature meeting was to be held. It was Pant who proposed the na.me of Trivendra for the post of the new chief minister and interestingly enough, Choubattakhal MlA Satpal Maharaj, who was also being projected in the media as a strong contender for the state’s top post, approved it.
The selection of Trivendra has sprung little surprise, given his roots struck deep into the RSS and the confidence he enjoyed among the party’s top leaders, including PM Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah. Trivendra remained a RSS pracharak for many years before he plunged into the political arena. Though he had lost the 2012 Assembly election from Doiwala his importance remained unscathed with Modi-Shah duo having entrusted him with a string of responsibilities during the period of 2012-2017. Aside from being given the post of the party in-charge for Jharkhand, he was more recently given the charge of the PM’s Varanasi road-show during the electioneering whose massive success is supposed to have contributed much to the unprecedented mandate the party received in the just-concluded UP polls.
The BJP insiders said that the party having zeroed in on Trivendra soon after the result was announced, the announcement was delayed with the top brass choosing to bide time to have a consensus built on his name.