M A I N   N E W S

The Last Word
Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri
Return of the general
S.M.A. Kazmi

He is back and he has taken command. Barely a month before his 77th birthday on October 1 and just about two years after he was unceremoniously shown the door by his own party, Major-General Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri (retd) was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand for the second time last week.

He is already hard at work. He has asked his ministers and IAS and IPS officers in the state to disclose their assets by October 15. He is hurrying through a new Jan Lokpal Bill to give the Lokayukta more teeth and is committed to ushring in a Public Services Act to ensure greater accountability and better governance.

And he is building bridges. Soon after he was sworn in, General Sahib, as he is called by political workers, drove to the house of the veteran Congress leader and the state’s first Chief Minister, Narayan Dutt Tiwary. The gesture surprised people who have known Major-General B.C. Khanduri (retd)  even as it signalled how much the former army officer-turned-politician has changed, mellowed and learnt since his first stint as Chief Minister four years ago.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had dumped him in 2009, barely two years after he had led the party to victory. The stern and upright General had rubbed too many people the wrong way. Khanduri had refused to go out of his way to woo industrialists and businessmen. He was blamed for turning away the Tatas who were keen to shift the Nano plant from Singur in West Bengal.

His decision to launch inquiries into as many as 56 alleged scandals alienated a section of the bureaucracy. His efforts to enforce punctuality prompted vicious whisper campaigns and his attempts to make MLAs used to the habit of seeking prior appointments and lay down the business were deemed ‘insulting’.

While the earlier Congress government had allowed outsiders to buy up to 500 square yards of land, Khanduri clamped down the ceiling at 250 yards, which allegedly stifled the real estate boom in the state. He also stopped extravagant spending and tried to bring in financial accountability and probity in public life.

While his predecessor conducted politics from his bedroom and through informal and oral directions, the former Major-General, who had commanded a Regiment on the Western front during the 1971 war, tried to bring about military discipline in the civilian government and soon fell foul of the wizened politicians, contractors and businessmen.

Described, unfairly as it were, as a ‘negative’ person prone to pull up colleagues and public servants in public, the dissidents forced the BJP to replace him in 2009, though he still had the support of a majority of the MLAs. The loss of all the five Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2009 general election to the Congress came in handy for the BJP to axe Khanduri.

Now he has been brought back by a beleaguered BJP to lead the party to the election, which is barely four months away. With his public image of being a clean politician and a good administrator, the party hopes to ride over the corruption scandals, controversies and poor governance that marked the last two-and-a-half years in the state.

But it might turn out to be a little too late for the General to pull off a miracle. His priorities are clear though.

“I admit that not presenting the recommendations of the Lokayukta in the state Assembly since 2006 was a mistake but I am all for giving more powers to the Lokayukta and to bring the office of the Chief Minister under its ambit,” he says emphatically. There is not much more though that he can hope to achieve in the short time at his disposal. But whether such legislative measures will impress the electorate remains to be seen.

What’s more, he is ‘once bitten twice shy’. Having learnt bitter lessons from his last stint, this time the General Sahib appears more accessible, more conciliatory, more media savvy and more willing to strike a compromise. He would be hoping that it does not cramp his style though or affects his public image and prevents him from delivering on his promises.

Khanduri comes from an illustrious and well-to-do Brahmin family from Tehri-Garhwal. An engineering graduate from Allahabad University, Khanduri plunged into politics soon after his retirement from the Army Engineering Corp in 1990.

Nominated by the BJP to contest the 1991 general election from Pauri, he won the Lok Sabha seat. Although Khanduri lost the seat in the next general election, he wrested it back in 1998 and retained it in 1999. That was when Atal Bihari Vajpayee included him as a Union Minister of State in the Union Council of Ministers.

Entrusted with independent charge of surface transport, the former army officer soon became the poster boy of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). He used his engineering background to good effect in executing Vajpayee’s ambitious Golden Quadrilateral project to connect the North with the South and the East with the Western parts of the country through highways. That is also when he acquired the reputation of being a tough administrator with a no-nonsense approach.

Earlier he went to jail during the agitation for separate statehood, demanding that the Garhwal and Kumaon hills be taken out of Uttar Pradesh. The protracted agitation paved the way for the formation of Uttarakhand in November, 2000. That was the year he became a union minister and such was his reputation that while the BJP lost the 2004 general election, he himself had no difficulty in retaining his seat in Parliament. Indeed, he was forced to resign from the Lok Sabha in 2007 and move to the state as chief minister.

The return of the prodigal is prompted as much by the BJP’s political compulsions as by the former General’s astute moves. Lying low since 2009, Khanduri nevertheless maintained contact with his supporters, travelling to all corners of the state and lending his weight to popular issues. He was quick to endorse Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption and led a march in its favour. As the Pokhriyal government was dragged into scandals, the contrast with Khanduri became more visible.

Khanduri persuaded Lt-General T.P.S. Rawat (retd) to leave the Congress and join the BJP, but Rawat was unhappy with the BJP leadership in Delhi and formed the “Uttarakhand Raksha Samiti’, even as Khanduri supporters called upon him to leave the BJP if necessary. The rattled BJP leaders gave in and Khanduri became Chief Minister.

The forthcoming election will be an acid test for the veteran. But the father of a son and a daughter, the former a journalist in the United States and the latter married to an IAS officer, Khanduri appears to be brimming with confidence. He is acutely aware that losing this one battle could cost him the war.