Tirath Singh Rawat appointed National Vice President of BJP

Dehradun, 17 Aug: BJP has finally announced its new national team to work under the leadership of its new national president Nitin Nabin. Importantly, the new team has four BJP leaders from Uttarakhand. Very significantly, former Chief Minister and former Garhwal MP Tirath Singh Rawat has been appointed one of the party’s vice presidents. Not only this, the current Garhwal MP and the BJP’s Media Cell Convenor, Anil Baluni has been retained on the same post. Other important inductions in the BJP’s national team include appointment of former Union Minister Smriti Irani and Ram Madhav as General Secretaries. At the same time, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vaundhara Raje has also returned to the national team and has been appointed as National Vice President.

In all, 13 national vice-presidents and 8 national general secretaries have been appointed to Nitin Navin’s team. Besides, Rawat, Raje and Madhav, Baijayant Panda, D Purandeswari, Rekha Verma, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Manpreet Singh Badal, Lal Singh Arya, and M Nagaraj have also been appointed as National Vice-Presidents. Besides Tirath Singh Rawat and Anil Baluni, two other party leaders have also been inducted in the national team of the BJP. While Mahendra Pandey has been appointed as National Office Secretary, Alok Bhatt has also been appointed as Social Media Co-convenor of the party. As was being speculated for some time, BJP’s Social Media in charge Amit Malviya has been finally replaced. He has been replaced by Deepak Mahaske. It may be recalled that Malviya held this position for a very long time, since 2014 but has finally been replaced. There was a persistent perception within the party that Malviya has not been very effective in handling the social media cell of the BJP during last few years and the party has not been able to counter the social media ‘propaganda’ of the opposition effectively.

Tirath Singh Rawat, who has facing lot of ups and downs in his political career, seems to have got a fresh lease of political life by being reinstated as the party’s national vice presidents. It may be recalled that Rawat, considered to be a protégé of former CM BC Khanduri has been in a kind of political oblivion after he was replaced not only as the CM of Uttarakhand within a period of few months of being appointed the CM but also replaced as BJP candidate from Garhwal Parliamentary Constituency by Anil Baluni, who was earlier a Rajya Sabha MP and continues to enjoy the confidence and trust of Union Home Minister Amit Shah according to the insiders in Uttarakhand BJP.

It may be recalled that Rawat was born on 1 April 1964 at Seeron in Patti Aswalsyun of Pauri Garhwal. He initiation into politics began through student politics and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), serving as an RSS pracharak from 1983 to 1988.

Rawat served as president of the students’ union of Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University and later became state vice–president of the Chhatra Sangh Morcha in Uttar Pradesh. He subsequently also served as state vice–president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in Uttar Pradesh and as a member of its national executive. He also served as organising secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in Uttarakhand and as its national secretary.

In 1997, Tirath Singh Rawat was elected for the first time as MLC in UP and was appointed chairman of the Nischay Sankalan Committee of the Legislative Council. Following the creation of Uttarakhand, he became the first Education Minister of the newly formed State in 2000.

In 2007, he was elected general secretary of the Uttarakhand BJP. In 2012, he was elected MLA from the Chaubattakhal Assembly constituency. Importantly in 2013, he was appointed president of the Uttarakhand BJP.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP fielded him from the Pauri Garhwal parliamentary constituency. He defeated his nearest Congress rival, Manish Khanduri, by a massive margin of more than 2,85,003 votes and was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time. During the same election, he was also appointed the BJP‘s election in-charge for Himachal Pradesh. He subsequently served as the BJP‘s national secretary.

Following the removal of Trivendra Singh Rawat as Chief Minister, Tirath Singh Rawat was appointed as the new Chief Minister of Uttarakhand on 10 March 2021. However, his tenure was relatively brief and he had to resign as Chief Minister in September 2021.

Rawat has remained active in the organisational structure of the BJP for several decades and has held several important responsibilities in the party. His appointment as BJP’s National Vice President is being seen as another significant responsibility entrusted to him in recognition of his long organisational experience and contribution to the party after a significant period of political hiatus.