PNS { DEHRADUN
The Bharatiya Janata Party announced Asha Nautiyal as its candidate in the Kedarnath Assembly bypoll late on Sunday night. The two-time former MLA of this constituency is currently the State head of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha and is known to be a diligent party worker. Nautiyal became a primary member of the BJP in 1990 and was later elected as a member of the district Panchayat in 1996. After serving in various posts in the party, she was elected as the Kedarnath MLA in 2002, defeating her closest rival by 3,400 votes. She was re-elected from the constituency in 2007 by a margin of 3,200 votes. Nautiyal lost the 2012 election from the constituency by a margin of 1,900 votes to the Congress candidate.
Nautiyal has been politically active from the ground level and has risen from the block and district level to the Assembly. Political observers opine that the contest between her and the Congress candidate Manoj Rawat is bound to be all the more interesting as both of them have their own strengths. While Nautiyal is more experienced politically with more years of activity at the ground level in the constituency, the Congress candidate has also been active, earlier as a journalist and later as the MLA and a politician. The BJP is claiming that the works done by the State government after the disaster earlier this year have assured the public of its reliability while the Congress is claiming that the BJP has failed on this front and other fronts, which has miffed the voters in the constituency.
Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami is slated to join Nautiyal on Monday when she files her nomination. In recent months, Dhami has announced developmental projects worth crores of rupees for the Kedarnath constituency, apart from claiming credit for the successful rescue operation following the disaster earlier this year. The Congress has stated that the BJP dented the sanctity of Kedarnath and affected the business of the locals by assisting the planned establishment of ‘Kedarnath Dham’ in Delhi. However, this project was stalled after considerable objection by those in Kedarnath and elsewhere in the State.
