Lalkuan: Asserting the Congress is contesting the Uttarakhand Assembly elections under his leadership, Congress leader Harish Rawat on Sunday said nobody in the party has any objections on his name as the chief ministerial candidate.


Rawat called the Congress move a “strategic matter” when asked on the issue of him not being announced the chief ministerial candidate unlike Punjab.


“More than 40 percent of the people want to see me as the CM candidate this time,” ANI quoted Rawat as saying.


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Asserting the Congress is “fighting to win the elections”, Rawat said: “I do politics of struggle, not power. The party has told me that the election campaign will be led by me.”


“Nobody in the party has any objections to my name as the chief ministerial candidate. No party member has expressed any objection to my name,” he added.


Rawat downplayed a poser about the contradiction between his statements on presenting a Dalit CM in the state and yet running for the post stating he indeed wants to see a Dalit CM in Uttarakhand.


The Congress leader, however, added “there is no deadline for the wish to be fulfilled”.


“We need to get rid of some mentality after 75 years of India’s Independence. Following a change in Punjab, a Dalit CM face has been announced. I have prayed for the same for Uttarakhand. When you make such wishes, you do not give a deadline,” said Rawat.


“But there is no time foundation for the prayer to become a reality. I have sought an opportunity from ‘Ganga Maiya’ that in the coming time, I can present a Dalit as the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand,” he added.


Rawat also lashed out at Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami over his remarks that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will constitute a committee to prepare a draft Uniform Civil Code (UCC) if re-elected in the hill state.


Calling the announcement to be a “jumla”, the former Uttarakhand chief minister said: “It is not within his constitutional right to implement UCC in the state.”


The hill state will go for polls in a single phase on Monday and the results will be declared on March 10.


In the 2017 Uttarakhand Assembly elections, the BJP had won 56 out of the total 70 seats. The Congress party bagged just 11 seats.