The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Trivendra Singh Rawat on the 9th of March resigned as the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand.
He resigned as the CM a year before the hill state Uttarakhand is scheduled to go for the Assembly polls.
Mr. Rawat, who became the CM after the BJP swept the assembly elections here in early 2017, tendered his resignation after meeting the State Governor Baby Rani Maurya.
Addressing a press conference after resigning, Mr. Rawat said that it was a collective decision by the BJP that someone else should get a chance to serve as the next CM of Uttarakhand. He said, “Serving the state for four years was a golden opportunity for me which the party gave me. Extremely thankful to the party for giving the opportunity to a man hailing from a small village.”
The now former CM Trivendra Singh Rawat added that a legislative party meeting would take place at 10am on the 10th of Marc, following which the Party would decide the new CM.
The BJP’s central observers for Uttarakhand, Raman Singh and Dushyant Kumar Gautam, will reach Dehradun later in the day for Wednesday’s meeting.
According to reports, the party is mulling bringing in a deputy chief minister, with the frontrunners for the top post being State Education Minister Dhan Singh Rawat, and Lok Sabha Members of Parliament (MP) Ajay Bhatt and Anil Baluni.
Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank is also a former CM of the northern state.