Uttarakhand Keycandidate Detail

Having lost the last three elections, the stakes are very high for former chief minister Harish Rawat, who contested from the Lal Kuan seat in Nainital district in the elections for the first time. Rawat had become an MLA for the first time in 2014 after winning bye-elections from Dharchula constituency of Pithoragarh district. Following that, in the last assembly elections in 2017, he fought from two seats – Haridwar (rural) and Kiccha in Udham Singh Nagar, but lost both to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Despite his defeat in 2017, the party high command gave him a ticket to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar seat. However, he once again faced defeat against BJP’s Ajay Bhatt by a margin of 3,39,096 votes.