Uttarakhand, March 10:
Tirath Singh Rawat, Lok Sabha MP from Garhwal, has been elected as leader of the Uttarakhand Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) legislature party, paving the way for him to become the new chief minister of the state.
This comes a day after outgoing chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat stepped down.
In the early days of his political career, Rawat was part of the Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the BJP’s youth wing, where he served as the state vice-president for some time before being elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council in 1997.
When the state of Uttarakhand was formed in 2000, Tirath Singh Rawat became its first education minister.
The following part of Rawat’s political career saw him working extensively for the BJP, first as its Uttarakhand general secretary in 2007 and later as the party’s state unit chief in 2013.
He was elected in 2012 as an MLA from the Chaubatakhal assembly constituency in his birthplace of Pauri Garhwal. He continued to serve as the Chaubatakhal MLA till 2017.
In 2019, Tirath Singh Rawat became an MP by defeating his rival Manish Khanduri by over 3.50 lakh votes from the Garhwal Lok Sabha seat.
The mild-mannered, 56-year-old politician is now set to be the ninth chief minister of Uttarakhand. His predecessor to the post, Trivendra Singh Rawat’s resignation came after BJP general secretary in-charge of Uttarakhand Dushyant Kumar Gautam and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Dr Raman Singh, submitted a report to the BJP’s central leadership detailing the rebellion in the state unit of the party.
