Pushkar Singh Dhami will be the next Chief Minister of Uttarakhand. Dhami on Monday was elected as leader of BJP Uttarakhand legislative party at a meeting in Dehradun. Central observers Rajnath Singh and Meenkshi Lekhi were present in the meeting.

BJP Uttarakhand election in-charge Pralhad Joshi was also present in the legislative party meeting. State in-charge and national general secretary Dushyant Gautam and Members of Parliaments from state also attended the meeting.

Congratulating Dhami after the legislative party meeting, Rajnath Singh said that the all-round development of Uttarakhand will happen under him. "Dhami left an impression by running a government for six months," Singh said.

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Before the Uttarakhand assembly polls, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had compared Dhami to cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Dhami, he said, was a good finisher, suggesting that he will get BJP the runs it needed to win the election. While making the cricketing analogy Rajnath Singh reportedly said Dhami was working relentlessly as the CM and needed also to play a test match.

Speculation over Dhami's future had started after he failed to win his own seat, but the BJP leadership has given him the responsibility to run a government for full term.

Dhami was plucked out of obscurity by the BJP last July and made the Uttarakhand chief minister, with just months to go before the state elections. He also happened to be the third leader to occupy the CM's post during 2021. Earlier in the year, Trivendra Singh Rawat had to make way for Tirath Singh Rawat.

Dhami seemed to have justified the party's confidence in him. The BJP won Uttarakhand again, the first time in the state's 21-year history that a party has come to power for a second term in a row. But in his own Khatima constituency, Dhami lost by a slim margin of about 6,500 votes.

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At 45, he was the state's youngest chief minister when he first took over in July. The state was then grappling with a series of problems and with elections just around the corner Dhami had little time to prove himself. The state's economy was battered by COVID, the Char Dham priests were agitating against a new regulatory board, and a massive COVID testing scam had hit the headlines earlier.

Like other BJP chief ministers, Dhami styled himself as the one who executed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's grand vision for the state's development through a double-engine government. Dhami is often regarded as a protégé of Maharashtra Governor and former Uttarakhand chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari, whom he served as an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) and an adviser.

He began his political career in 1990 with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the BJP and was the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha twice. He campaigned for the reservation of jobs in industries for the local youth. Dhami's father retired as a subedar in Army.

He was born in Pithoragarh's Tundi village after the family shifted there from its ancestral village Harkhola. When he was in class 5, they moved to Khatima, which was to become Dhami's karmabhoomi' later. He won the assembly polls from there twice.

He graduated from Lucknow University in Human Resource Management & Industrial Relations and also has a degree in law.

(With inputs from agency)

(Edited by : Priyanka Deshpande)

First Published:Mar 21, 2022 6:51 PM IST