Lucknow, March 17: Trivendra Singh Rawat, a former RSS pracharak, was today elected leader of the BJP legislative party in Uttarakhand, paving the way for him to take over as chief minister.
J.P. Nadda, Union health minister and the BJP's state minder, confirmed Trivendra had been chosen the leader. He will take oath tomorrow. "Prime Minister Modi had said that Uttarakhand needed two engines to bring it to the path of development. Now, with the Centre and the state in our hand, we will ensure fast growth," said Trivendra.
A low-profile leader in the hill state, Trivendra seems to have been rewarded for his tireless efforts in Varanasi - the Prime Minister's Lok Sabha constituency - during the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly election campaign. "He had camped there along with party president Amit Shah for over three weeks. The BJP won all eight Assembly seats in the district," said a BJP leader.
Earlier an organisational secretary of the BJP, Trivendra had entered electoral politics in 2002 when he won from the Doiwala seat. He won again from there in 2007 and became minister of state for agriculture. But fearing defeat, he shifted to the Raipur seat in 2012 and lost.
This time, the party fielded him from Doiwala and he won by a margin of over 12,000 votes against the Congress candidate. Trivendra - who has a diploma in journalism - is currently the central BJP minder for Jharkhand and was earlier the party's poll in-charge in Chhattisgarh.
Prakash Pant and Satpal Maharaj, two contenders for the Uttarakhand chief minister's post, proposed Trivendra's name at today's meeting of MLAs. While the meeting was on at a hotel in Dehradun in the presence of Nadda, supporters of Maharaj and Pant raised slogans to make their leader the chief minister.
" Hamara mukhya mantri kaisa ho? Satpal Maharaj jaisa ho (How should our CM be? He should be like Satpal Maharaj)," his supporters chorused. Maharaj had left the Congress in 2014 after the party did not make him chief minister and handed the post to Harish Rawat.
Trivendra's supporters also chanted: " Delhi mein Narendra, pahar par Trivendra (Narendra in Delhi, Trivendra in the hill state)." Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend the swearing-in in Dehradun.
