Kotdwar Dynamics: BJP Gives Ticket To Ritu Khanduri, Sitting MLA Harak Singh Rawat Out Of 2022 Contest, Congress Drops Him From Poll Race

Days after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) expelled sitting MLA from Kotdwar Harak Singh Rawat from the cabinet as well as the party, the constituency has come back in news for two reasons.

MLA from Yamkeshwar Ritu Khanduri, daughter of senior BJP leader and former chief minister Major General (Retd.) BC Khanduri will now fight from Kotdwar. Kotdwar will see Rawat -- the MLA who had made news for being upset with Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on issues related to his own constituency -- completely out of the poll fray.

Congress has not given him a ticket.

Ritu Khanduri's name came up for BJP's contest in Kotdwar a few days after it was announced that she will not be given the ticket from Yamkeshwar for the upcoming assembly election.

Ritu Khanduri will now be fighting from Kotdwar, where her father had fought an election in 2012 and lost. It was a loss that came to bite the BJP. Khanduri got a second and bigger chance in 2014, a year after the Kedarnath floods impacted lives and politics in the hill state.

Ritu Khanduri was on ground to help her father in the campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from the Pauri Garhwal constituency. She won the assembly poll from Yamkeshwar in 2017.

BJP's Renu Bisht will contest against Congress’s Shailendra Singh Rawat from Yamkeshwar for the 2022 assembly poll.

Harak Singh Rawat, who had joined the Congress after being expelled from the BJP will not be contesting, reports say. Rawat was ousted by the BJP earlier this month after months of speculation and reports in several sections of the local media that he was making efforts to join the Congress.

The party however dropped the former BJP MLA and gave a ticket to his daughter in law from Lansdowne. It is the first time in two decades that Rawat will not be contesting in the assembly poll.

With these developments, Kotdwar has returned to prominence in the 2022 assembly election.