After a sweep,Uttarakhand Cong awaits representation in Union Cabinet

Three of the five winners are strong contenders for getting a berth in the union cabinet. Party sources say that the strongest contender for a ministerial berth is Harish Rawat who got elected from Hardwar. To begin with,this is his fourth Lok Sabha term although he has won a poll after a gap of two decades. In addition to this he has already had a stint in the Rajya Sabha also. In total absence of party organization,he not only converted the battle of Hardwar to his advantage but also gave a foothold to his party in a constituency where it was not in the reckoning at all for the last several years. The seat was considered a strong hold of Samajwadi Party and the BSP.

Belonging to the hilly terrain of Almora and having won from the Hardwar seat in Terai belt,Rawat’s elevation to a ministerial berth can amalgamate the ‘hill plain divide’ which his rivals tried to make an election issue.

The second strong contender is Satpal Maharaj. Besides having been a minister of state for railways in the United Front government,Maharaj also enjoys a close proximity to the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. The biggest factor that goes to his advantage is that he has won from the seat that was considered to be a bastion of Uttarakhand Chief Minister BC Khanduri. The Congress had last won the seat in 1984. Maharaj had won from here in 1996 on Congress Tewari ticket.

The third strong contender is Vijay Bahuguna who carries forward the political legacy of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and former union petroleum minister Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna. A second consecutive win from Tehri constituency along with his sister Rita Bahuguna Joshi being the president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) and having close proximity to Sonia Gandhi adds up to his advantage.

During the course of campaign,the Congress incharge for Uttarakhand RK Dhawan had announced that this time around it would be made sure that the state gets duly represented in the union cabinet.

The BJP had been playing up the point that Uttarakhand had been properly represented during the NDA regime. The present Chief Minister Khanduri,the then Lok Sabha member from Pauri was one of the prominent faces in the Atal Behari Vajpayee cabinet as he was handling the surface transport ministry and was responsible for executing the government’s flagship programme of constructing the golden quadrilateral. Sushma Swaraj as Rajya Sabha member from the state was another prominent member handling ministries like information and broadcasting,health and family welfare and parliamentary affairs. The Lok Sabha member from Almora Bacchi Singh Rawat was the minister of state for defense and later science and technology.