As Uttarakhand prepares to vote, Kumaon gets a big push

While both the regions are key to the election result, this time, the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress have focused their energies on Kumaon, the smaller of the two regions.

Of the state’s 13 districts, Kumaon, which has Nainital as zonal headquarters, has six. Garhwal, with Pauri Garhwal as headquarters, has seven districts. Garhwal, of which capital Dehradun is a part, has 41 constituencies and is much larger than Kumaon, which has 29.

One of the reasons Kumaon has been more in focus this election is because both Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and senior Congress leader and chief ministerial aspirant Harish Rawat are contesting from Kumaon. While Kumaon is traditionally considered a Congress stronghold, in Garhwal, the odds are more even.

In 2017, riding the Narendra Modi wave, the BJP managed to win in 57 of the total 70 Assembly seats while the Congress was limited to 11 seats. Two of the remaining seats were won by Independent candidates who are now with the ruling party.

That election, it was the Garhwal region that powered the BJP to a big win, mainly because several powerful Congress leaders from the region, including Satpal Maharaj, Harak Singh Rawat and Vijay Bahuguna, had joined the BJP ahead of the elections. The party won 34 out of 41 seats in Garhwal and 23 out of 29 seats in the Kumaon region. The Congress won six in Garhwal and five in Kumaon.

But now, with Harak Singh Rawat back in the Congress and Vijay Bahuguna and Satpal Maharaj seen as sidelined in the party, and with the anti-incumbency against the BJP likely to be a factor, both sides seem evenly matched in this region.

That leaves Kumaon wide open for both the parties — a fact that’s evident given the attention lavished on the region by both the Congress and the BJP.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earlier accused the Opposition of creating a wedge between Garhwal and Kumaon.

Sources in the BJP suggested the party’s desire to do well in Kumaon was one of the factors it considered when it brought in the relatively inexperienced Pushkar Singh Dhami, a two-MLA from the region, as Chief Minister to replace Tirath Singh Rawat. It was a move to counter Harish Rawat, they said.

Both Tirath Singh and his predecessor Trivendra Singh Rawat were from Garhwal.

Of the state’s 10 CMs so far, six were from Garhwal and the remaining four from Kumaon. Yet, it is Kumaoni leaders who have mostly dominated politics here, even before Uttarakhand became a state.

Uttar Pradesh’s first chief minister, Govind Ballabh Pant, was from Kumaon. Later, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, also from Kumaon, became UP CM on three occasions, before becoming Uttarakhand’s first CM and the only one to have completed his five-year tenure. The state’s first elected Assembly had, besides CM Tiwari, Harish Rawat (then the Congress state chief), and Speaker Yashpal Arya as among the top leaders from Kumaon.

In 2012, the Congress won 32 seats in the 70-seat legislature, one more than the BJP’s 31, and formed the government with help from the BSP, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (P) and Independents. That election, the Congress won 19 seats in Garhwal and 13 in Kumaon, while the BJP won 16 and 15 seats in Garhwal and Kumaon respectively.

In 2007, before the delimitation of Assembly seats, the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 34 seats, followed by the Congress’s 21. The BJP then took the support of two Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) MLAs and three Independents to form the government. In the first Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly election, in 2002, the Congress emerged as the largest party with 36 seats. The BJP won 19.