Former Uttarakhand CM and Congress leader Harish Rawat  |  Photo Credit: PTI
Former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat is saying and doing things that could make him look like an overconfident politician blustering ahead of the results of an election. But there is more than meets the eye in Rawat’s bombast over the past few days. Whether his party wins or not, Rawat is pitching to do battle not against the incumbent BJP but with the leadership of his own party in New Delhi.
On Tuesday, Rawat threw a bash to celebrate Congress’s victory in the 2022 Assembly election. Of course, this event could only have been held without the tarnish of the fact the votes are to be counted only on March 10. Rawat predicted that his party would bag 45 to 48 seats in the 70-member Uttarakhand Assembly – an absolute majority.
This remark drew a quick response from the Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami who counterclaimed that the BJP would win the majority come March 10. However, he may have spoken out of turn, considering Rawat’s remarks seem more for internal consumption than a lashing out at rivals.
Just days ago, Rawat made his take-no-prisoner approach clear when he declared that he would either be Chief Minister of the state or he would “sit at home”. The significance was lost on no one in Uttarakhand, though whether the message landed as intended is likely to be clear in the post-poll wrangling in New Delhi.
Rawat has been swinging from battle to battle within his party’s state unit in the run-up to polling on February 14. He has been locked in a factional feud with a number of state-level heavyweights, which has seen the party released two separate lists of candidates ahead of the polls.
He clashed with former ally Ranjit Rawat for the ticket to contest from the Ram Nagar seat. They both ended up contesting from elsewhere. Rawat’s eventual decision of contesting from Lalkuan too ended up in acrimony. The ticket for the seat had earlier been given to Sandhya Dalakoti. She refused to withdraw her nomination and was expelled from the party for six years. She declared that her efforts would be aimed at undercutting any coalescing of votes for Rawat.
Surrounded by friends-turned-foes in his own party, Rawat has little hope – even if the Congress does secure a majority – of taking power in the state without the aid of the party high command in New Delhi. That’s why he issued a call ‘requesting’ interim party chief Sonia Gandhi to pick a Chief Ministerial face.
Whether the public infighting in the Congress will cost it yet another election will become apparent on April 10. But till then party leaders, especially Rawat, are in no mood to wait to secure the positions they deem fit for themselves.