History repeats itself in Uttarakhand as Trivendra Rawat quits a year before his full tenure

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. (Source: Twitter)

Uttarakhand chief minister (CM) Trivendra Singh Rawat, submitted his resignation to state Governor, Baby Rani Maurya, on March 9, amid reports of disquiet within the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) state unit.

“The party gave me a golden opportunity to serve this state for four years. I had never thought that I would get such an opportunity. The party has now decided that the opportunity to serve as CM should be given to someone else now,” he said after submitting his resignation.

With the resignation, Rawat joins the not-too-distinguished league of seven other Chief Ministers – both from the Congress and the BJP - who stepped down before completing their five-year term in the hill state, which was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in November 2000 as Uttaranchal, and rechristened Uttarakhand in 2007.

Since its formation, the state has had eight Chief Ministers. Five of them, including Nityanand Swami (2000-2001) and Bhagat Singh Koshyari (2001-02), both legislative council members in office before the state conducted its first election, were from the BJP.

Read: Trouble for BJP govt in Uttarakhand? CM Trivendra Singh Rawat to meet top brass in Delhi amid change in guard talks

The only politician to have completed a full five-year in the state as Chief Minister was late Narayan Datt Tiwari, the Congress leader, who held office between 2002 and 2007.

Tiwari, the first elected CM of Uttarakhand, was replaced by Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri, BJP's first elected CM of the state. Khanduri  joined in March 2007, but lasted for about two years until June 2009. He resigned over the party’s poor performance in the 2009 general elections and was replaced by Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, the current Union Human Resource Development (HRD) minister in the Narendra Modi government.

Pokhriyal’s term was cut short as he resigned in 2011 amid corruption allegations, a year ahead of the assembly elections in 2012. Khanduri replaced Pokhriyal again.

In the 2012 assembly elections, Congress won 32 seats against BJP’s 31 and Congress leader Vijay Bahugana took over as Chief Minister. Bahugana continued till January 2014, when he quit only to be replaced by Harish Rawat of the Congress who was in office for two years and 55 days, for the first term, from February 2014 to March 2016. Harish Rawat became the Chief Minister again, albeit for a day on April 21, 2016.

Uttarakhand came again under President’s Rule, as Congress MLAs rebelled and joined hands with the BJP. But Harish Rawat won a court-monitored floor test in the state assembly on May 11, 2016 and continued to be the CM until March 2017.  In the same year, however, the BJP won the assembly polls bagging 57 of the 70 seats and Trivendra Singh Rawat took over.

But on March 9, history repeated itself and Rawat quit a year before his five-year tenure could end. BJP leaders, including Dhan Singh Rawat, Ajay Bhatt, and Anil Baluni are front runners to replace him once the resignation is accepted.