By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
With less than a year left for the assembly elections, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday expanded his cabinet by inducting five new ministers comprising former state BJP chief Madan Kaushik.
Governor Lt Gen (retd) Gurmeet Singh administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new ministers.
Besides Kaushik (Haridwar MLA), others who took oath included Khajan Das (Rajpur Road), Pradip Batra (Roorkee), Ram Singh Kaira (Bhimtal) and Bharat Singh Chaudhary (Rudraprayag).
While Kaushik and Batra belong to the plains, both Kaira and Chaudhary are from the pahadi background representing Kumaon and Garhwal respectively. By inducting Das, Dhami has given representation to the SC community.
Significantly, Batra, Kaira and Chaudhary are the first-timers in the cabinet. With this, the total strength in the Dhami cabinet has reached the maximum limit of 12 under the Constitutional provisions. This is the first Cabinet expansion in four years amid mounting political pressure form various quarters especially after Finance Minister Prem Chand Agarwal was forced to resign, a move that left the ruling BJP caught between the plain-hill divide.
Later, Dhami congratulated the new ministers and said his entire team would work collectively towards the development of the state and public service. “Our objective is to ensure that the benefits of development reach the last person of the state, and that they receive opportunities to progress. We will all work together, with a spirit of teamwork, dedicating ourselves to serving the people of the state,” he said.
Munna Singh Chauhan, a senior BJP leader, was again not considered for the Cabinet berth despite being a four-time MLA. “There was a tussle between Khajan Das and Munna over the cabinet berth. We could have given representation to only one person from Dehradun. Das got preference,” a BJP leader said.
However, BJP gave representation to two persons from Haridwar district but did not accommodate anyone from Udhamsingh Nagar district which also falls under plains.
“This is purely a political and damage control exercise to bring new faces from the plains as there was considerable resentment in these areas due to the Agarwal and Kaushik episodes. Kaushik was unceremoniously removed from the post of BJP President.,” a BJP observer commented.
