DEHRADUN: Chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat was on Wednesday urgently summoned to Delhi to meet the BJP’s central leadership. Rawat was in Ramnagar till Tuesday to attend the party’s ‘Chintan Shivir’, a three-day brainstorming session for the upcoming assembly polls, and had just returned to Dehradun. He cancelled his appointments for the day and left for the national capital.
The sudden summon led to speculations in the state’s political circles that the BJP is planning early assembly elections in Uttarakhand to bypass the requirement of having a bypoll so that the CM can be inducted into the state assembly. Rawat is currently a Lok Sabha MP from Tehri Garhwal. When he replaced Trivendra Rawat as chief minister on March 10, he was not an MLA.
He needs to win an assembly seat by September 10, to be able to continue as chief minister. Opposition Congress had a few days ago claimed that there was a constitutional crisis in the offing in the state and Tirath Rawat cannot continue as CM beyond September 10. Former Congress minister Nav Prabhat had cited provisions of the Representations of People Act, claiming that a “bypoll cannot be held if elections are scheduled within a year’s time span.” He alleged that since the chief minister needs to win a bypoll in order to continue to hold the post, BJP would have no option but to change the state’s CM again before the assembly elections scheduled early next year.
On being queried by reporters on Wednesday morning regarding his Delhi visit, the CM said, “Since we had a three-day brainstorming session in Ramnagar, I am going to discuss the conclusions at length with the party’s senior members.” When asked about the bypoll, Rawat said the “party leadership will take a call on that”.
Meanwhile, Nav Prabhat when contacted said he did not want to comment on the CM’s visit to Delhi as “it is the party’s internal affair”. He added, “I am waiting for the Election Commission to announce its decision on the matter. But the visit does seem sudden.”
State government spokesperson Subodh Uniyal said that not much should be read into the CM’s visit to the national capital. “A visit to Delhi is not a very big issue. Such visits by party leaders are frequent but some people are trying to exaggerate it unnecessarily.”
On the bypoll impasse, Uniyal said, “The responsibility of a government is to inform the Election Commission about any vacant constituency and thereafter the EC takes a call on the issue. We have duly informed the EC.”
At present, two assembly seats – Gangotri and Haldwani — are lying vacant in the state. Gangotri seat fell vacant on April 22 after the demise of BJP legislator Gopal Rawat while Congress MLA from Haldwani Indira Hridayesh passed away on June 13.
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