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Uttarakhand 2017: Year of high drama ends

An eventful year come to a close in Uttarakhand. The year 2017 saw the Bharatiya Janata Party scoring a historic…

Uttarakhand 2017: Year of high drama ends

Chief Minister Trivendra Rawat with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

An eventful year come to a close in Uttarakhand. The year 2017 saw the Bharatiya Janata Party scoring a historic win the state assembly polls and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat suffering the biggest defeat of his political career. Kidney racked scam rocked the hill state and after assuming power the Trivendra Rawat government got the transfer bill passed in the state assembly.

Riding on an anti incumbency wave, the BJP managed to register the biggest ever win by any political party in the history of Uttarakhand. BJP won 56 seats to reduce Congress to 11 seats in the 70-member state assembly. Ignoring claim of many senior leaders, BJP decided to make fifty-six year old Trivendra Rawat the Uttarakhand CM.

Congress fought the polls on the face of Chief Minister Harish Rawat with poll slogan, “Har Da purey panch saal’ (Brother Harish for five years). The experiment flopped and Rawat had to face defeat from two seats-Haridwar rural and Kiccha seats- in the Uttarakhand assembly polls.

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Despite claiming big on doing concrete things to curb corruption, the Trivendra Rawat has so far failed to get the Lokayukta Bill implemented. As an election promise the BJP had promised appointing Lokayukta in six months after voted to power.  The bill was tabled in the state assembly in March and after receiving objections was sent to the Select Committee of the House. Now the Trivendra Rawat government is  showing little zeal to get the bill enforced.  The Trivendra Rawat government is facing uneasy situation on the CBI inquiry recommended it had made on the Rs 300 Crore National Highway-74 scam. The CBI is yet to start probe to cause discomfort to BJP in Uttarakhand.

Alike its earlier counterpart Congress, the BJP too showed little interest in making Gairsain the permanent or summer capital of Uttarakhand. The capital issue remained hot in media but little was done on ground to solve the issue. In December 2017 the winter session of the state assembly was hosted at Gairsain, but the week long session concluded in mere two days. Which also exposed the sentiments of both BJP and Congress towards Gairsain. In a move to ensure transparency in transfer of state government employees, the Trivendra Rawat government managed to get the transfer bill passed in the state assembly.

The year 2017 witnessed big VVIP movement in the hill state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kedarnath on its opening and one day ahead of the closing. President of India Ram Nath Kovind too offered prayer at Kedarnath. The Kedarnath tourism industry saw a record  4.69 Lakh tourist visited the pilgrimage centre. Kidney scam created shockwaves in Uttarakhand. A nursing home located in outskirts of Dehradun was involved in the scam in which poor and innocent were lured for illegal kidney transplantation. Another controversy was related to the husband of  Uttarakhand Minister Rekha Arya. The minister is struggling after his husband’s servant approached Nainital Police complaining about cheating by his owner- who took him to Colombo and removed his kidney.

 

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