By Sunil Negi
Critical evaluation
For a decade now the BJP has ruled Uttarakhand uninterruptedly, and as the state inches towards the 2027 assembly elections with just a few months left, the sheen of that dominance is wearing off rapidly.
It was indeed in 2022 that the BJP for the very first time broke the myth of Uttarakhand’s alternating governments since its creation as a separate state on November 9, 2000, encashing the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and riding the pro-Hindu and Ram Temple wave to return to power for a second consecutive term, a feat that had shocked many.
But the euphoria of that second term has evaporated in the daily struggles of the common pahadi.
The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal and the very people who fought vigorously and shed blood for a separate state have been proved right when they accused both national parties, especially the BJP in the last ten years, of merely enjoying the fruits of power while their MLAs and MPs have become enormously rich, accumulating wealth and property, while doing precious little credible for the welfare of the state, particularly for those living in the remote rural hills.
The most damning indictment of a decade of saffron rule is the tragic exodus, more than 30 lakh people have permanently migrated from their ancestral villages to Dehradun, to internal towns, to Delhi and other states, not out of choice but compulsion, for better education for their children, for a job, for a simple doctor and hospital, because in ten years the BJP government could not give them a functional school with teachers, an employment avenue, or a primary health centre equipped with doctors, surgeons, equipments, medicines and paramedics. The hills are emptying while the capital is choking.
This emptying has been accelerated by a deeply entrenched unholy nexus between contractors, engineers, bureaucrats and politicians which has literally exploited Uttarakhand to the hilt, minting huge profits at the cost of the public exchequer, with roads that wash away in one monsoon, bridges that collapse before inauguration and projects that remain on paper but are fully paid for.
The historic blunder of lifting the 12.5-acre land ceiling during the tenure of former Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has allegedly proved catastrophic, almost half of the fertile and fragile land of Uttarakhand has been purchased and grabbed by big business houses, black marketeers, land mafia and colonisers from outside, permanently spoiling the demography, culture and identity of Devbhoomi that the martyrs had fought to protect.
Today Dehradun is unrecognizable with suffocating multistorey residential and commercial buildings built in violation of all norms, resorts mushrooming on the very banks of sacred rivers in valleys, apartments and luxury hotels coming up in hill stations like Mussoorie, Nainital, Jeharikhal, Lansdowne and Auli with massive deforestation in the name of all-weather roads, making our once green forests bald and Uttarakhand dangerously prone to floods, landslides and ecological disasters.
In summer the jungles burn for weeks with no policy, and the fragile Garhwal Himalayas have been literally dug up and made hollow from inside with indiscriminate tunnels for rail and road projects, despite the scientific fact that Uttarakhand falls under Seismic Zone 5, the most sensitive earthquake zone in the country.
On governance, the promise of a strong Lokpal to check corruption remains a distant dream, deliberately forgotten, while the state’s fiscal deficit has crossed a staggering Rs 70,000 crores, pushing the hill state into a debt trap, even as the excise department is let loose to earn revenue through massive, unchecked sale of substandard liquor, destroying the social fabric, breaking families and ruining the health and youth of the state.
Corruption is no longer an allegation but a system, massive National Highway scams, Jal Jeevan Mission irregularities, and forest land scams are pending with no hope of the powerful being punished.
The massive cheating scam in UKSSSC which shattered the dreams of lakhs of unemployed youth involved BJP leaders and yet no big fish has been jailed, and the painfully sensitive Ankita Bhandari murder case continues to haunt the conscience of Uttarakhand as the identity of the VIP has not been pinned down and the much demanded CBI probe not reaching to any credible conclusion , leaving people to believe that the government is allegedly protecting its own. Hundreds of painful deaths of pregnant women of interior villages due to non availability of the timely ambulances or connecting roads have also added to the voes of the already suffering women and patients suffering from critical illnesses.
Political morality is at its lowest ebb, the present Uttarakhand BJP government is ironically being run by half of the Congress defectors who revolted against the Harish Rawat government in 2016, opportunists who are now ministers and wield power without ideology.
We had been hearing from the former CM Trivendra Singh Rawat that Uttarakhand had ammased the corporate investment worth Rupees eighty thousand crores when he was the chief minister of Uttarakhand but after he wasn’t the CM all talks about that massive investment went in the background. Then comes respected Pushkar Singh Dhami who toured several foreign nations including UK and publicly said about massive foreign investment in Uttarakhand for setting up of industrial units to ensure the state’s development and subsequent massive employment but u fortunately nothing has been practically found on the surface . How long will the people of Uttarakhand be fooled is a moot question .
Add to this skyrocketing inflation that has made survival difficult in the hills with sugar going Rs. 65 to 70 per kilogram, massive unemployment where even postgraduates are forced to work as daily wagers, deteriorating law and order, paper leaks in every recruitment exam, and an alarming surge in man-eater leopard attacks and fatalities due to complete ecological imbalance, the common person has simply lost faith in the saffron party government.
The anti-incumbency against Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami who is seen more as a manager of defectors and Ghoshna CM and his ministers and MLAs who remain inaccessible in their constituencies is tremendous and visible on the ground.
The BJP is today in a completely defensive mode, holding review meetings and making last-minute announcements that no one trusts, while the Congress is in a clear offensive mode, reconnecting with the migrated youth, with women, with farmers and with the idea of a hill-centric development model that was the original dream of Uttarakhand.
As 2027 approaches, the ground is fertile for a regime change and after ten long years of misrule, false promises and demographic and ecological ruin, the tide seems to be turning and the possibility of the Congress returning to power in Uttarakhand looks stronger and more real than at any time in the last decade, though till the last vote is counted, fingers will remain crossed.
