BJP weighs its options for Uttarakhand CM post

The Uttarakhand assembly poll result has presented the Bharatiya Janata Party with a dilemma of sorts as it weighs various options after outgoing chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami who was tipped to continue in the post lost the election even as the party stormed back to power.

Party sources said Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan may be sent to the state as central observers to oversee the legislative party meeting to elect the new leader. No date has been fixed for the meeting yet.

The BJP has created history in the hill state by retaining power as every other previous government was voted out in the past. It won 47 seats in the 70-member assembly.

Party circles are abuzz on whether their top leaders will put their trust in Dhami again, which necessitates that a sitting MLA vacate his seat for him to fight the poll again, or one of the newly-elected legislators will be picked to be the new chief minister.

The BJP also has the option of choosing one of its senior leaders from the state, who is currently not an MLA, for the job.

It may be noted that the BJP had chosen a new chief minister in Jai Ram Thakur following its win in the 2017 Himachal Pradesh polls after its chief ministerial choice and veteran leader Prem Kumar Dhumal lost the election. Thakur was one of the MLAs.

The BJP had changed two chief ministers in Uttarakhand in the last year of its government's term with Dhami taking over in July last year.

The 46-year-old leader was seen by the party as someone who managed to negate anti-incumbency before it smashed the challenge from the Congress to retain power.