Sunday, 09 July 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN

The speculations on an imminent expansion of the State Cabinet intensified after the chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami went to Raj Bhawan to meet the governor lieutenant general (retd) Gurmit Singh on Saturday.  As per the official version the governor and CM discussed the different development projects and other current issues in the meeting. However the meeting added momentum to the talks of the expansion of the Dhami cabinet.

It is also speculated that Dhami could drop some ministers to make way for fresh and young faces in his cabinet. In his recent three day visit to New Delhi, the CM met top leadership of the BJP including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah, BJP president JP Nadda and senior ministers of Modi government. Dhami also met senior functionaries of the party in New Delhi. It is believed that in these meetings the CM discussed the plan to expand his cabinet. It is pertinent to mention here that the distribution of responsibilities to the position holders is also pending from a long period of time. The sources indicate that the CM could go for both expansion/ reshuffle of his cabinet and distribution of responsibilities soon.

 Three positions in the cabinet have been vacant ever since Dhami took over the CM in his second stint in March last year. After the death of Minister Chandan Ram Dass, the number of vacancies in the cabinet increased to four. At present there are only two ministers (Rekha Arya and Saurabh Bahuguna), from the Kumaon region in the cabinet.

Similarly as many as seven districts including the Haridwar and Nainital are unrepresented in the cabinet, At present the Pauri (Satpal Maharaj and Dhan Singh Rawat) and Dehradun ( Prem Chand Agarwal and Ganesh Joshi) are represented by two ministers while Champawat is represented by CM Dhami, Udham Singh Nagar by Saurabh Bahuguna, Tehri by Subodh Uniyal and Almora by Rekha Arya in the cabinet.

 The names of veteran BJP leaders Bansidhar Bhagat, Madan Kaushik, Munna Singh Chauhan, Dharampur MLA Vinod Chamoli, Speaker Ritu Khanduri, Devprayag MLA Vinod Kandari, Lansdowne MLA Dilip Singh Rawat and Tharali MLA B R Tamta are making rounds as possible new faces in the Dhami cabinet.