LUCKNOW: The appointment of Pushkar Singh Dhami (45), a Lucknow University alumnus, as the new chief minister of Uttarakhand brought cheers on the campus on Saturday.
The teachers and students said that they were proud that one of their own was now the CM of a state.
Dhami will be sworn in as the new Uttarakhand CM on Sunday. He will be the second LU student to become the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand after Harish Singh Rawat (2014-17). Both of them had studied law at the university.
Dhami pursued BA (1993-96), a diploma in public administration (1996-97), masters in human resource management (1997-1999) and LLB (2002) from Lucknow University.
LU teachers, student leaders and former students who used to move on the campus with Dhami and accompanied him to a number of political conventions of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in university days recalled their association with him. He was also the president of LU’s ABVP unit.
“Dhami was different. He was not aggressive like other student leaders and did not believe in violent protests to get their demands accepted. He was the face of students and I am happy that a self-made man will now be people’s face,” said head of the public administration department Prof Manoj Dixit.
A batchmate and a close friend of Dhami, a Noida-based entrepreneur Anubhav Singh, said: “Dhami and I did MHRM together and I was a resident of Habibullah hostel and he was in Narendra Dev hostel. I still remember how passionate he was for ABVP. Every person he met on the campus he made sure to make them understand the ideology of the student wing.”
A politician and a university senior, Bajrangi Singh Bajju, said: “He worked with me in Vidyarthi Parishad from 1998 till 2000 and we lived in the same hostel. He was active in student movement and it were people like him who made ABVP strong on LU campus.”
Dean, law, Prof CP Singh said, “We are happy that our student has made it big. He was among few students who were active in campus politics and were good at studies as well.”
Another LU faculty (retd) Neeraj Jain of the physical education department, who was also a student leader in the university days, said: “Dhami used to campaign for me during students election and gradually he grew as a popular and active student leader on campus.”
