The cabinet of 46-year-old Pushkar Singh Dhami, Uttarakhand’s 12th chief minister, is a mixed bag of new and experienced faces. Saurabh Bahuguna, the grandson of former Uttar Pradesh CM Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, has been inducted as a first-time minister. The Dhami cabinet can accommodate a total of eleven ministers. However, eight including lone woman minister Rekha Arya were administered the oath of secrecy on Wednesday. Three positions are still vacant in the cabinet.
Interestingly, four senior leaders including state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Madan Kaushik expecting a ministerial berth were left out. Besides Kaushik, the ministerial berth hopes of Bishan Singh Chupal, Arvind Pandey and Bansidhar Bhagat were also dashed. All three were ministers in the previous regime.
However, there is some hope left for six-time MLA Chupal who represents the Didihat constituency in border district Pithoragarh. Party insiders say he could vacate the seat for chief minister Dhami, who will have to get elected to the state assembly in six months’ time after losing the MLA election recently. Chupal in return could be sent to the Rajya Sabha. A day before the swearing-in event, he told News18 that he was “ready to accept any order by the party”.
Balancing Caste Equations
Out of nine cabinet members including CM Dhami, three are Brahmin faces, three are Thakur, two are Dalits and one is from the Vaishya community. The BJP has tried to smartly balance the caste equations. Two upper caste communities – Brahmins and Thakurs – have been given equal representation, followed by Dalits and Vaishyas. Prem Chandra Agarwal, a senior party MLA from the Vaishya caste, was the speaker of the assembly in the previous regime. In this term, he will serve as a minister.
Two Dalit ministers – Rekhya Arya and Chandan Ram Das – come from the Kumaon region. Similarly, the chief minister is the only Thakur face from Kumaon while two other Thakur ministers – Satpal Maharaj and Dhan Singh – hail from the Garhwal region. Two Brahmin faces – Ganesh Joshi and Subodh Uniyal – represent assembly constituencies in the Garhwal region, while the third one, Saurabh, represents the Sitarganj constituency in Kumaon.
Family Connection
In the past few days, there was a lot of buzz around Ritu Khanduri who avenged the defeat of her father Maj Gen BC Khanduri, former chief minister of the state. In the recent assembly polls, Ritu won from Kotdwar, which her father lost in 2012. The two-time MLA Ritu Khanduri will be appointed as the speaker of the assembly. This was decided in a high-level BJP meeting at the state capital.
Ritu will be the first woman speaker in the state assembly. Though her father BC Khanduri is not active in mainstream politics owing to his age, he enjoys tremendous respect among the masses. The big support base of women for the BJP in the recent elections also helped Ritu’s elevation.
Interestingly, Ritu and first-time minister Saurabh are cousins. Saurabh’s father Vijay Bahuguna was also chief minister of Uttarakhand between 2012 and 2014. The senior Bahuguna was instrumental in breaking the Congress party in 2016. As a result, 10 MLAs had then joined the BJP. One among them is Subodh Uniyal, who is a second-time minister in the Dhami government. Uniyal is considered to be close to the Bahugunas.
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