New Delhi: Pushkar Singh Dhami was sworn in as the 12th chief minister of Uttarakhand on Wednesday at Parade Ground in Dehradun. Apart from Dhami, eight ministers took oaths of office and secrecy by governor Gurmit Singh.The swearing in ceremony was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, road transport minister Nitin Gadkari, and BJP national president J.P. Nadda. Several other high profile BJP leaders, including many CMs, attended the event. Among them were Yogi Adityanath, Pramod Sawant, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Manohar Lal Khattar, Bhupendra Patel, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Jairam Thakur and Vasundhara Raje.Dhami was on March 21 chosen as the leader of the BJP legislative party. His continuation as chief minister had come under a cloud following his loss from Khatima in the recent assembly elections. However, as BJP had won 47 of the 70 seats in the polls and in doing so had become the first party in the 21-year-old state to return to power, Dhami was rewarded for his efforts.Of the remaining seats, the Congress had won 19 seats in the polls, the Bahujan Samaj Party and independent candidates had bagged two each.BJP national general secretary Dushyant Gautam, former Union minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, UP CM-designate Yogi Adityanath, Goa CM-designate Pramod Sawant, Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and others, during Dhami’s oath taking ceremony, in Dehradun, Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Photo: PTIDhami became youngest Uttarakhand CM at 45 last yearDhami, who is 46 now, had become the youngest chief minister of the state when he was brought in to replace Tirath Singh Rawat in July last year. Subsequently, he had worked to ending the agitation by the temple and shrine priests against the constitution of the Char Dham Devasthanam Board. He also tried to assuage the feelings of party leaders who were eyeing the CM post, and also tried to do some damage control after the Dharam Sansad in Hardwar, where calls for violence against Muslims were made, had harmed the party’s reputation in the state.As a result of all these efforts, the BJP was able to overcome anti-incumbency, the anger of Muslims against its divisive agenda, and that of the farmers due to its handling of the farmers’ agitation. Though the vote share of the Congress went up and the BJP’s fell by a few percentage points, the saffron party still managed to win but by a much smaller margin than in 2017 – when it had won 57 seats.Five ministers retained, only one woman While again reposing trust in Dhami, the BJP has also retained five ministers: Satpal Maharaj who won from Chaubattakhal, Subodh Uniyal from Narendra Nagar, Rekha Arya from Someshwar, Ganesh Joshi from Mussoorie and Dhan Singh Rawat from Sri Nagar seat.The BJP has also retained its only woman minister from the previous government, Rekha Arya. She had won her election from the Someshwar constituency.Incidentally, while four BJP MLAs were elected in the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections, and the number increased to five each in the 2012 and 2017 polls, this time eight women candidates of BJP had won.There was speculation that Ritu Khanduri, the daughter of former chief minister B.C. Khanduri, who defeated senior Congress leader Surendra Singh Negi from Kotwar, would become a minister, she was given the post of speaker of the Uttarakhand assembly.Three new faces in CabinetApart from retaining five former ministers, the BJP has also brought in three new faces as ministers in the Dhami government. These are Chandan Ram, Saurabh Bahuguna and Prem Chand Aggarwal.Chandan Ram is a four-time MLA who has been made the minister for the first time. He had won from Bageshwar.Prem Chand Aggarwal had won his election from Rishikesh. He has also been made a minister for the first time.Just the way BJP accommodated former CM Khanduri’s daughter as speaker, it has also made Saurabh Bahuguna, son of former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, a cabinet minister. Saurabh, a third-generation politician, won his election from Sitarganj.After taking oath, Dhami said the first meeting of the state cabinet will take place on March 24. “The upcoming decade will be Uttarakhand’s, and we are determined to make it so. We’ll start working from today for the development of our state,” he declared.
