Uttarakhand Assembly Elections 2022: Why is the CM's seat so slippery?

The political trajectory of the three states has since been starkly different from each other.

While Chhattisgarh has been fairly stable politically with a bipolar contest between the Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Jharkhand has seen more frequent changes in Chief Ministers and governments. Uttarakhand, however, has seen far greater instability than the two combined and quite literally--the number of different Chief Ministers in the state so far at 10, is more than Chhattisgarh's (3) and Jharkhand's (6) added together.

As Uttarakhand goes to the polls with an incumbent government that has seen three different leaders, it is worth exploring why the state has seen such churn at the top.

There are various ways to dissect this, but whichever way you look at it, what stands out clearly is that the state lacks a dominant leadership or a popular face so to speak. As we show, the roots of this go back to much before the state was formed, and this continues to play out in the way parties campaign today.

No region-specific political movements

In states such as Telangana, or even Jharkhand, parties that were associated with the demand for statehood continued to hold sway in the state’s electoral politics.

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The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in the former and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in the latter, remain strong political forces in their states. However, Uttarakhand, while having significant political movements, has not seen these movements evolve into large-scale political churn.

A possible reason for this difference could also be the co-option of the movement and cause for Uttarakhand’s statehood by the mainstream political parties (including the BJP and INC), thereby reducing the room for a separate political entity to emerge. This swift overtaking of the agenda for statehood by the two national parties possibly gave them greater ability to set the political tone in the state. This holds true even in the case of Chhattisgarh, but Uttarakhand’s situation is more acute with the absence of popular faces even within mainstream parties.

Unlike Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, where Chief Ministers developed a certain individual standing, Uttarakhand, in its two decades of statehood, sees a paucity of leaders who have a cult following or even who have won widespread support on their individual merit.

The state has only seen one Chief Minister last a full-term (Congress’ ND Tiwari), whose political exile while he was alive is well known, and while Harish Singh Rawat has gained significant individual standing, the Congress under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership does not seem to be so interested in him.

Under these circumstances, the politics of the state is governed by two national parties who end up dictating the internal politics of the state. What is more, barring Tiwari, almost all others can be called parachute Chief Ministers in a sense, pointing towards heightened high-commandism. The possibility of a strong leader emerging from either party is further reduced by petty one-upmanship of leaders trying to establish themselves as politically important entities.

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Finally, we see that the rhetoric of ‘double-engine’ government is being repeated loudly and emphasised by the BJP during the election campaign. IT only goes to show that the party is not very interested in establishing a strong popular face in the region, as opposed to one operating at the will of those in Delhi. Coupled with the fact that even the Congress does not seem to clearly declare Rawat as their CM candidate, it seems that Delhi still holds considerable sway over the order of business in Dehradun.

The historical vacuum of popular mobilisation, due to the co-option by parties, and the parties’ subsequent high commandism raises questions on whether the CM really is in-charge. How deeply does this status quo damage the articulation of regional aspirations or grievances? One wonders what the electorate thinks of this.

(The authors are researchers at the Center for Policy Research, Delhi. The views expressed are personal.)