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New Delhi/Dehradun: After nearly a week of
deadlock, Uttarakhand will get a chief minister with the Congress
naming its Tehri-Garhwal MP Vijay Bahuguna as the leader of its
legislative party.
Bahuguna's name was announced by party leader and Union Health
Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad here.
"It was decided by the MLAs and all the party leaders that Vijay
Bahuguna will be the chief minister," Azad announced.
He also recalled that the party MLAs had, in their meeting after
the results were out, authorised Congress president Sonia Gandhi
to name the chief minister.
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.
Soon after his name was declared for chief ministership, Bahuguna,
65, thanked Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi.
"I will take all sections of the party along and there will be no
break up,"
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.
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.
The two central leaders had submitted their report on the views of
the party's 32 MLAs on legislative party leadership to Sonia
Gandhi Sunday.
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