India: Bahuguna sworn in as Uttarakhand Chief Minister

Dehradun/New Delhi, Mar 13 (PTI) Member of Parliament Vijay Bahuguna was today sworn in as the Chief Minister of the northern Indian hill state of Uttarakhand after the Congress Party, to which he belongs, overruled a revolt by another party MP, Harish Rawat, who is said to have offered to resign from the central government of which he is a junior minister. 65-year-old Bahuguna was the lone minister to take the oath of office and secrecy at a brief ceremony at the Parade Ground in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Governor Margaret Alva administered the oath at the function which was attended by former Chief Minister N D Tiwari, central Congress observers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Birender Singh, party MP Satpal Maharaj, Uttarakhand Congress chief Yashpal Arya, and Bahuguna's sister Rita Bahuguna Joshi. Prominent Congress leaders Harak Singh Rawat and Indra Hridayesh, who were themselves aspirants for the Chief Minister's post, were conspicuous by their absence as were Harish Rawat's supporters. The Congress, which won 32 seats in the 70-member Assembly, one more than BJP's 31, has managed to get the support of three independents and an equal number of BSP state legislators and that of the sole UKD(K) legislator. But the revolt by Rawat, who is said to have a sizable number of supporters among the MLAs, came as a surprise to the party leadership. A former High Court judge-turned politician, soft-spoken Bahuguna has a tough task on hand to keep the flock in faction-ridden Congress in Uttarakhand together and rein in his detractors. Politics runs in Bahuguna's blood since he is the son of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna. A cousin of outgoing Uttarakhand BJP chief minister B C Khanduri, the second-term Lok Sabha MP representing Tehri Garhwal, is the brother of UP Congress unit chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi. Bahuguna, who is currently Vice-President of Uttarakhand unit of Congress, quit as a judge and joined politics under the tutelage of his father. He was also the Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Commission during the earlier Congress regime. PTI