Tirath Singh Rawat will be the new chief minister of Uttarakhand. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader is currently a Lok Sabha member from the Pauri-Garhwal parliamentary constituency.
Rawat, 56, was BJP's Uttarakhand unit chief between 2013 and 2015 and had earlier served as a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the state's Chaubattakhal seat. He had defeated Congress' Manish Khanduri by a margin of more than three lakh votes in the 2019 general election.
The decision to make Tirath Singh Rawat the next chief minister was ratified in the BJP's Legislative Party meeting. NDTV reported that Rawat could be sworn-in as the hill state's chief minister at 4.00 pm on March 10.
This came a day after Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat submitted his resignation to Governor Baby Rani Maurya amid reports of disquiet within the BJP's state unit. He would have completed four years in office next week.
BJP leaders Dhan Singh Rawat, Ajay Bhatt, Anil Baluni and Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal were some of the other names being seen as front runners to replace Trivendra Singh Rawat.
With his resignation, Trivendra Singh Rawat joined 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 Uttarakhand. The state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in November 2000 as Uttaranchal and was renamed Uttarakhand in 2007.
The BJP formed the government in Uttarakhand after winning 57 of the 70 seats in the 2017 assembly election. With the term of the current Legislative Assembly set to end in March 2022, the state is expected to head for polls early next year.
