Who will win Uttarakhand !

By: Jagdish Bhatt

Dehradun : Having done their hectic bit of touring their constituencies, candidates of all parties for the vidhan sabha elections held in Uttarakhand held on Jan 30, were playing the dandelion clock … will they, won’t they (make it to the vidhan sabha).

Apparently the reason for the uncertainty of which party will form the government has only deepened with the voting percentage having gone to an all time high of about 70 per cent in the state. This is being interpreted differently by the concerned parties.

While the opposition Congress claims that the turn out was on the higher side as people came out to express their anger against the BJP government in the state and it was basically the anti-incumbency factor at play; the BJP maintains that the heavy turn out was for continued development in the state.

But importantly, a number of political observers as also leaders of both the BJP and the Congress have now thinking in terms of a possibility of a hung House, which was first written about in Hill Post about a fortnight before elections were held. Earlier popular view was that the Congress would form the government in the state.

Reason for this was the fact that the issue of corruption, specially alleged during the tenure of Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ as BJP chief minister, had become a bone of contention not only for the state party leaders, but the high command. They were forced to change Pokhriyal just six months before the elections and bring in Khanduri, who enjoys the confidence of the masses as far as honesty is concerned.

This coupled with the fact that the BJP openly came out with an election campaign ‘Khanduri hai jaroori’ (Khanduri is necessary) for the all round development and prosperity of the state and portrayed him as the next chief minister, enthused not only the party rank and file but the voters also, who fed up with the prevalent rampant corruption, felt that change could be in the offing.

And as for the state Congress, bereft of any state leader of stature who holds a say in Uttarakhand, were totally dependant upon the central leadership to woo the voters. And though from Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh to Anand Sharma, Virbhadra Singh and Sheila Sixit held public meeting and rallies, there seemed to be no gelling with the masses.

Plus the party simply failed to unleash an aggressive campaign to highlight the misdoings of the BJP government and the fact that none of the issues relating to the masses, from mass migration from the villages, to employment, education, health, electricity and road connectivity had been addressed.