Ramesh Pokhriyal was today named the new chief minister of Uttarakhand, replacing B C Khanduri, who had resigned owing moral responsibility for the rout of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
The change of guard in the hill state — from a veteran ex-Army general to a poet and writer — was also necessitated in view of infighting and rebellion within the BJP’s state unit that had been going on for months.
Khanduri will formally submit his resignation to Governor B L Joshi tomorrow, following which Pokhriyal will be sworn in.
The 50-year-old Pokhriyal, who held the health portfolio in Khanduri’s cabinet, was named as Khanduri’s successor at the end of the four-hour meeting between the elected legislators and BJP leaders M Venkaiah Naidu and Tawar Chand Gehlot.
A well-known Hindi writer, Pokhriyal had been elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly thrice — in 1991, 1993 and 1996. At 39, he was appointed minister in the Kaylan Singh government in UP for the first time. He has since been minister twice each from UP and Uttarakhand.
Pokhriyal’s selection came through after an interesting and yet a non-transparent exercise at the BJP headquarters here. Naidu and Gehlot, who are in charge of the state, met each of the 35 party MLAs personally to ascertain their choice of the chief ministerial candidate. The BJP has a total strength of 35 MLAs in the 69-member Uttarakhand Assembly.
Though no ballot was cast to elect the new chief minister, some MLAs said Prakash Pant, tourism minister in the Khanduri cabinet, was also a strong contender for the post. According to Ganesh Joshi, an MLA from Dehradun, “All of us took a pledge to let bygones be bygones and work for the interests of unity of party and a stable government.”
Meanwhile, Naidu said rebel leader B S Koshiyari would be given responsibilities in the Centre as he was a Rajya Sabha member. This is obviously aimed at keeping Koshiyari out of the state politics.
However, party insiders says today’s exercise would only give a temporary reprieve to the BJP in the hill state.
