Congress  Tehri-Garhwal MP Vijay Bahuguna  has been selected by the Party Management to be the next Chief Minister of the Uttarakhand.  His name was announced by Health Minister Gulam Nabi Azad. “It was decided by the MLAs and all the party leaders that Vijay Bahuguna will be the chief minister,” Azad announced.
This development is amid  grave threat by another party leader Harish Rawat to quit party, if he was not selected as the Chief Minister. Rawat claims to have support of 11 MLAs of the party.
The decision comes a day after Union Minister from the state Harish Rawat and Bahuguna held a two-hour meeting with Azad and Birender Singh.
Congress, with 32 seats in a house of 70, had staked its claim to form a government in the Himalayan state late last week after the results on March 6 threw up a hung assembly.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has 31 seats in the Uttarakhand assembly. The Congress has won the support of three Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs, apart from three independents and the lone MLA from the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal.
“A decision has been taken that Vijay Bahuguna will be the leader of the legislature party in Uttarkhand and the new chief minister,” Azad said in the presence of Bahuguna and Congress general secretary Chaudhary Birender Singh, who is in charge of party affairs in Uttarakhand.
Bahuguna is the son of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and brother of present Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Rita Bahuguna-Joshi.
He is a vice president in the Uttarakhand Congress unit. An advocate by profession, He has served as a judge of the Allahabad and Bombay High Courts. He also served as the vice chairman of the Uttarakhand Planning Commission.