The BJP legislature party on Friday selected former RSS pracharak Trivendra Singh Rawat for the post of the chief minister of Uttarakhand. Rawat (56), who is an MLA from the Doiwala seat, is also known to have close links with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. He built a place for himself in national politics after he worked alongside Shah in Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
He is currently the convener of the Modi government’s Ganga cleanup, the ‘Namami Gange’ programme. He is also the party in-charge in Jharkhand. Rawat worked under senior BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh, Lalji Tandon, during his early days in politics. When Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, Rawat was the party’s Uttarakhand General Secretary (Organisation). He won the 2002 and 2007 State Assembly polls from the Doiwala seat.
He became a Cabinet minister when BJP formed government after the 2007 assembly election. But he suffered debacles when he lost the 2012 State Assembly polls from the Raipur seat, and the 2014 by-elections in the Doiwala seat to the Congress. “He [Rawat] was a snooty individual… That’s probably the reason why he couldn’t garner votes in the two polls. However, the debacles brought a noticeable change in him and now he’s much better while dealing with people,” a highly placed source in the BJP said.
However, keeping the 57 MLAs intact is going to remain a challenge for Rawat. “Keeping the MLAs (57) intact, 11 of whom had crossed over from the Congress to the BJP few months before the polls, is going to be a challenge for Rawat,” the BJP source said.
