By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
With a group of people led by former IAS officer Vinod Raturi launching a campaign for permanent capital in Gairsain, the Uttarakhand government has started the process of removing restrictions on the Raipur freeze zone in Dehradun where a Vidhan Sabha was proposed.
In a cabinet decision on Monday, the government has now allowed the construction of low-income houses and shops in the freeze zone in Raipur area, a move that indicated that the government may not be interested in constructing a new Vidhan Sabha there. However, the government has not commented on the issue so far.
The Gairsain issue is a political hot potato in Uttarakhand. The decision to construct Gairsain Vidhan Sabha was taken by Vijay Bahuguna, who is now in BJP after quitting Congress. When Bahuguna became the chief minister in 2012 to head Congress government, he took the first initiative to lay the foundation stone for constructing a vidhan sabha at Gairsain in 2013 giving clear indication that it will be the future capital of the state. The construction of the vidhan sabha was completed in 2016. Before 2016, several Vidhan Sabha sessions were held at make-shift tents at Gairsain. The first such session was held on June 9, 2014.
For past 2-3 decades, the statehood activists in Uttarakhand want permanent capital status for Gaisain, a small town in the hills of Chamoli district where the second Vidhan Sabha was constructed. The first Vidhan Sabha is in Dehradun, the interim capital of the hill state which was constructed on the bed of the Rispana river.
After Congress got a drubbing in the assembly elections in 2017, the then Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on March 4, 2020 surprised everyone by announcing Gairsain as the summer capital of the hill state. He tried to partially settle the long-standing issue which intermittently crops up during elections. “I am feeling proud to announce that Gaisain will be the summer capital of Uttarakhand,” said Rawat after the budget session at Gairsain. But after the ouster of Rawat in 2021, the Gairsain issue was put on the backburner.
Ever since the creation of Uttarakhand as a separate state on November 9, 2000, Gairsain remains an emotive issue.
After Derhadun was made the interim capital, the successive governments never showed seriousness in solving the issue of the permanent capital. The report of the V N Dixit Commission on the state capital was also not considered. The Dixit commission had looked into the feasibility of five places – Dehradun, Gairsain, Rishikesh, Kashipur and Ramnagar as the state capital on several parameters including geographical conditions, population, accessibility, transport system, seismic conditions and security.
The commission submitted its 250-page report in 2008 to the then BJP government. But since then, no action was taken on the report which stated that Dehradun should be made permanent capital and rejected Gairsain on seismic grounds.
It will be interesting to watch Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s move on the Gairsain issue as far as the development of Raipur is concerned, a BJP leader said. The government is yet to announce a concerted plan to provide all logistics and infrastructure that are needed for the summer capital and budgetary provisions in this regard. There is also uncertainty on the issue of the winter capital as Dehradun is still the interim capital. Ends