By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 29 Dec: BJP today declared all the remaining mayoral candidates for municipal elections. BJP has declared Saurabh Thapliyal as its Mayoral candidate from Dehradun. It may be pertinent to point out here that Saurabh Thapliyal is considered close to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and insiders claim that his proximity to the CM has lent him the party ticket. He has managed to beat many senior party leaders as well as the outgoing Mayor Sunil Uniyal Gama for the BJP ticket as the Mayoral candidate in Dehradun which is the most high profile Municipal Corporation in Uttarakhand.
Saurabh Thapliyal may be well known in the political circles owing to his proximity to the CM and the senior party leadership but is a relatively new name for many in Dehradun. Others who were vying for the BJP ticket from Dehradun included the outgoing Mayor Sunil Uniyal Gama, Puneet Mittal, Siddharth Aggarwal, Anil Goyal, Digambar Singh Negi and Ravindra Jugran.
In addition, BJP has also declared Shambhu Paswan from Rishikesh, Anita Devi Aggarwal from Roorkee, Gajraj Singh Bisht from Haldwani and Deepak Bali from Kashipur. It may be recalled that Deepak Bali has only recently joined the BJP after quitting AAP.
Earlier in the day, the BJP had also declared Kiran Jaisal-OBC-Women from Haridwar, Srinagar (Women-Asha Upadhyay Women seat from Srinagar); former MLA Shailendra Rawat from Kotdwar; Kalpana Devlal (Women) from Pithorargah; Ajay Verma-OBC from Almora and Vikas Sharma from Rudrapur as the Mayoral candidates.
It may also be recalled that Shailendra Rawat had returned to BJP after quitting Congress just before the Parliamentary Elections. He had been a BJP MLA from Kotdwar in the past but could not win any election as the Congress candidate. He contested as Congress candidate in 2017 and 2022 elections too. In 2012, he had contested as an independent candidate after failing to get BJP ticket.
