Uttarakhand Election Result: Pushkar Singh Dhami Submits Resignation, To Continue As Caretaker CM

As per norms, Pushkar SIngh Dhami, however, will continue to serve as the caretaker CM till the new chief minister is sworn in.

New Delhi: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, along with the cabinet, submitted his resignation to Governor Lieutenant General Gurmit Singh at Raj Bhavan on Friday.

The development comes a day after the results to the state assembly elections were announced, in which Dhami lost from the Khatima seat to his Congress rival Bhuwan Chandra Kapri, despite Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retaining power with a comfortable majority in the hill state.

As per norms, Dhami, however, will continue to serve as the caretaker CM till the new chief minister is sworn in. "As we have got a thumping majority in Uttarakhand, at the end of the work of the present term, I submitted the resignation, along with the cabinet to Governor Shri @LtGenGurmit ji," Dhami posted on his Twitter handle.  

According to the data of the Election Commission, Dhami lost to his Congress rival by 7,000 votes on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the BJP leadership has started looking for a suitable chief ministerial candidate for Uttarakhand. Among the several names that are doing the rounds, the name of Union Minister of State for Defence, Ajay Bhatt has emerged for the state’s top post.

A Lok Sabha member from Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar, Ajay Bhatt is a senior BJP leader, who was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly before the formation of Uttarakhand. He was elected twice to Uttarakhand Assembly -- in 2002 and 2012 -- and became a member of the Lok Sabha in the year 2019.

In July last year, Bhatt was made the Minister of State for Defence.

Apart from Ajay Bhatt, the other names doing the rounds for the coveted post include former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni.

“The next Chief Minister of Uttarakhand will be decided by the Central leadership of the party, and names of a few leaders have already started doing the rounds. Right now, Bhatt is leading the race,” news agency IANS quoted a BJP worker as saying.

Among the MLAs, Satpal Singh Maharaj and Dhan Singh Rawat, ministers in the previous Uttarakhand government, are the other possible CM candidates for the hill state.

Notably, it’s a tradition of sorts that the sitting Chief Minister in Uttarakhand doesn’t win the assembly polls. Congress leader Harish Rawat had tried his luck in 2017 elections from two seats but failed in both.