By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 10 Mar: It was in 2002 when the then sitting CM, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, had won his assembly elections from Kapkot. But even he could not manage to secure a win for his party, the BJP, in the 2002 elections. That was the only time in Uttarakhand that a sitting CM had managed to win his own assembly elections. As an outgoing CM, ND Tiwari decided not to contest election in 2007 due to advanced age and the Congress lost the elections. In 2012, the then sitting CM, BC Khanduri, lost his election from Kotdwar. His party had lost the assembly poll very narrowly and the Congress wrested power from the BJP. Vijay Bahuguna was nominated as CM by the Congress High Command but he did not last and was replaced by Harish Rawat in 2014. In between, Rawat lost power when many of the Congress MLAs had rebelled against him. But the court reinstated him and he lost the 2017 assembly elections along with a huge defeat for his party. Interestingly, he had contested from not one but two seats, namely Haridwar Rural and Kichha (Udham Singh Nagar) but had badly lost from both the seats and the power was wrested from Congress by the BJP by a huge majority in 2017. CM Trivendra Singh Rawat lost the support of the party high command in between and was replaced by Tirath Singh Rawat but even he was replaced in less than 4 months by Pushkar Singh Dhami. It was the open accessibility and humble and positive approach of Dhami that he turned the elections around for his party, which has managed to win 48 seats (wins plus trends at the time of writing this story) even when it was being considered to be a close fight but he could not win his own seat Khatima from where he lost against Bhuvan Kapri by a margin of 6579 votes.
It may however be reminded that it is for the first time that a ruling party has managed to retain power in Uttarakhand as there was a trend of power changing hands every election. Though, Dhami managed to break this trend but still he failed to break the jinx of the CMs losing their own elections in Uttarakhand.
