Inflation, unemployment biggest election issues: Harish Rawat

Harish Rawat says there is lot of anger in hills among youth over paper leak and introduction of Agnipath scheme for recruitment in army

Published on: Apr 15, 2024, 12:00:43 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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Former Uttarakhand chief minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat (75) has been canvassing vigorously for his son Virendra Rawat, who is the party candidate from Haridwar Lok Sabha seat. In an interview to Chetan Chauhan, the most prominent Congress face in the hill state explains why he has not campaigned for other party candidates and why he believes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will miss the hat-trick of winning all five seats in the state in April 19 general elections. Edited excerpts:

What are the major poll issues in Uttarakhand?

I think inflation and unemployment are the two biggest election issues. There is lot of anger in hills among youth over paper leak and introduction of Agnipath scheme for recruitment in army, which was a major source of employment for people in Uttarakhand. People are also talking about corruption and biased conduct of elections. I also feel that lack of development and disrespect for women and deprived sections, such as Scheduled Castes, are some other poll issues.

The Congress lost all five seats in the state in 2014 and 2019. How do you think these elections will be different?

Yes, we lost all the seats in two Lok Sabha elections. It was a close contest for the party and me in 2019 (Rawat lost from Nainital seat by close to 300,000 votes). This time, I can say people are fed up with the BJP and will vote for the Congress. People are fighting the BJP and there is an undercurrent against the ruling party. We are getting good response to the issues we are raising against the BJP.

You were the Congress MP from Haridwar Lok Sabha constituency in 2009, your wife Renuka contested the seat in 2014 and your son is the candidate this time. Does it not mean dynastic politics?

No. I think the party has given ticket to the best candidate who can defeat the BJP.

You are the tallest Congress leader in the state, but there is an allegation that you are spending all your time campaigning for your son and not visiting any other constituency.

I will not lie. It is true I have not been able to give time for other Lok Sabha constituencies. We have been trying to win Haridwar seat for the past 15 years… This time, my son is contesting. I am giving my best for him and don’t want to take any chances.

On ground, the Congress appears to be missing. What is your view?

The way the BJP has tried to financially kill us and poach our leaders have had some impact on ground. But our workers are responding with lot of enthusiasm against the money and resource of the BJP. We are focusing on door-to-door campaign. There was good response to Priyanka (Gandhi Vadra) ji’s rally in Roorkee on March 13. The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) has come to Uttarakhand twice and it shows the panic of the BJP.

The BJP-led state government has notified Uniform Civil Code and demolished several mazars citing encroachment in forest areas in Haridwar. Do you think these issues will have an impact on the polls?

When the BJP know they will lose, they try to polarise. Before this election, they (BJP) tried their level best to spread hatred among people through these actions. It will have no impact as people can see the ruling party’s intention and have not reacted to it. UCC is not a poll issue in Uttarakhand. Villages here have their own issues of water, migration, jobs and roads. The BJP has failed to address them and people are asking why the party MPs were missing for the past five years. No more people will vote in the name of Narendra Modi.

There has been a lot of ecological damage in Uttarakhand due to construction of Char Dham road and other hydel and developmental projects.

When I was the chief minister, we planned the Char Dham road expansion project. It was improvement of the roads without any ecological damage. We had a plan for dealing with the muck during road widening. The BJP came to power and did not take care of the mountains while widening the roads. The muck was thrown into rivers and hills were cut in a most haphazard manner. If we come to power, we would do development in Uttarakhand in an environment friendly manner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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