While the incumbent BJP headed to a remarkable victory in Uttarakhand, bucking the trend of alternate governments in the hill state, 46-year-old party Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was all set to lose his own election from Khatima constituency in Udham Singh Nagar district at the hands of Congress candidate Bhuwan Chandra Kapri.
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Considered by many as an “accidental chief minister”, 46-year-old Pushkar Singh Dhami last year replaced Tirath Singh Rawat as the CM after the latter quit ostensibly on being unable to get elected to the state Assembly within the deadline of six months from the date he took over. Dhami thus became Uttarakhand’s tenth CM and seventh from the BJP.
Submitting his resignation, Rawat had stated that considering the “constitutional crisis” he found it appropriate to resign. Earlier, Rawat was sworn in on March 10 last year after being picked by the BJP central leadership as the CM in place of Trivendra Singh Rawat, who had run afoul of a party section as well as the RSS.
It is believed that a two-time MLA Dhami, a relatively inexperienced leader, was made the CM as in the 2022 Assembly polls the BJP had decided to focus more on the Kumaon region where the Opposition Congress has been dominant in the recent past. In the 2017 polls the BJP had won 34 seats in the Garhwal region, which was just two short of the majority mark in the state.
While the BJP’s previous two CMs, Trivendra and Tirath, were from Garhwal, Dhami, a Kumaoni leader, was brought to counter the Congress’s principal leader Harish Rawat, who hails from the Kumaon region.
Born in Pithoragarh in 1975, Dhami 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 the BJP’s Uttarakhand Yuva Morcha twice, from 2002 to 2008.
Dhami had served as an officer on special duty (OSD) to Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, when the latter was the Uttarakhand CM in 2001-2002. He also held the post of vice-chairman (with the state minister rank) of the urban monitoring committee in the state. He is a law graduate in human resource management and industrial relations.
Dhami belongs to the Thakur community, and the saffron party, by choosing him as the next CM, sought to balance caste and regional equations ahead of the polls.
Earlier, Dhami had successfully contested twice from Khatima seat. In the 2017 polls, however, his victory margin was just 2,709 votes. He then garnered 36.92 per cent votes, while the runner-up Congress candidate Bhuwan Chandra Kapri got 33.53 votes. In 2012, Dhami had defeated Congress candidate Devendra Chand by 5,394 votes.
In the current elections, Dhami had the challenge to fight the “anti-incumbency factor” against the saffron party and buck the state’s trend of alternate governments. He also faced the challenge to win from his Khatima seat against the trend of no incumbent CM ever winning an election.
During the poll campaign, the BJP had highlighted that Dhami is much younger than the 73-year-old Congress leader Harish Rawat. The party also projected Dhami as “a young and polite politician, who did not get enough time to work in Uttarakhand”.