Pushkar Singh Dhami set to return as Uttarakhand CM, oath-taking ceremony on Wednesday

Earlier on Sunday, a meeting had been held at Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s residence to take a decision on the matter. BJP national president JP Nadda and senior leaders from the state, including Pushkar Singh Dhami, who is now the caretaker CM, former CM Trivendra Singh, Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank and Satpal Maharaj, were present at the meeting.

In the recently held Assembly polls, BJP won 47 out of the 70 seats. Congress won 19 seats while BSP and Independents bagged two seats each. Bucking the usual trend in the state, BJP became the first ruling party to be voted back to power in Uttarakhand.

Dhami was considered by some to be an “accidental CM” when he replaced Tirath Singh Rawat in 2021. Rawat, who had been sworn in on March 10 last year, quit citing a “constitutional crisis” after he could not get elected to the Uttarakhand Assembly within the six-month deadline since he took over as the CM. He had been handpicked by the central leadership to succeed Trivendra Singh Rawat, whose relationship with RSS and many BJP leaders reportedly got strained.

A two-time MLA and a relatively inexperienced politician, Dhami was reportedly chosen as the Chief Minister as BJP wanted to put an emphasis on Kumaon—a region where Congress has been dominant—before the polls.

In 2017, the BJP got 34 seats in Garhwal—if the party had just two more seats from the region, it would have got a comfortable majority in the state.

While BJP’s previous two CMs, Trivendra Singh Rawat and Tirath Singh Rawat, were from Garhwal, Dhami, a leader from Kumaon, was brought in to counter Harish Rawat, a Kumaoni leader. Since Dhami hails from the Thakur community from the hill region, the BJP, by choosing him as the next CM, was attempting to balance caste and regional equations.

The clean image of Dhami, who is also the youngest CM of the state, reportedly helped the BJP’s performance in the elections. This time, Dhami lost the Khatima seat by 6,579 votes to Congress candidate Bhuwan Chandra Kapri, who is considered to be close to Rahul Gandhi. But the party has now reposed faith in him by announcing that he would return as the CM. The BJP also said that at least six MLAs in the state have already offered to vacate their seats for Dhami.

Born in Pithoragarh district in 1975, Dhami has worked in different positions in the RSS and its affiliate bodies for 33 years. He was also a member of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for 10 years, during which time he worked in the Awadh Prant region of Uttar Pradesh. He had been the president of BJP’s Uttarakhand Yuva Morcha twice, from 2002 to 2008.

Dhami had served as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Bhagat Singh Koshiyari when he was the chief minister in 2001-2002. He also held the post of vice-chairman (with state minister rank) of the urban monitoring committee in the state. He is a law graduate in human resource management and industrial relations.

So far, Dhami has successfully contested twice from the Khatima seat in Udham Singh Nagar. In 2017, however, the margin of victory was just 2,709 votes. According to the election commission data, in the last assembly election, Dhami had secured 36.92 percent votes and runner-up Congress candidate Kapri received 33.53 percent votes.

In 2012, the margin was comparatively bigger—Dhami had then defeated Congress candidate Devendra Chand by a margin of 5,394 votes.