Uttarakhand floods: CM Vijay Bahuguna on his way out?

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna could be on his way out thanks to what has been perceived to be his poor handling of the floods and the subsequent disaster in the state. According to a report in Business Standard, the Uttarakhand Congress high command is not very happy with the way the CM had dealt with the situation. The report quotes an anonymous cabinet minister  as saying, “The mood among the public in Uttarakhand and outside is against the Congress government in the state because of the inordinate delay in starting rescue operations.” It also quotes party sources as saying the party high command wasn’t happy with Bahuguna and was considering a change of guard in the state. Bahuguna on the other hand has admitted that the state government was not prepared for the disaster. In an candid interview to CNN-IBN he said that the disaster management committee in the state had not met for six years and they were not at all prepared to handle such a huge catastrophe. “It is true we do not meet the norms of disaster management. It is also true that there is lack of personnel. We need to pull up our socks,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_897995” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Vijay Bahuguna in this file photo. PTI[/caption] But Bahuguna also defended his government saying that even army personnel had never seen a disaster like the Uttarakhand floods. He also said the Met department was partly responsible, saying it never warned the government of either a flashflood or a cloudburst. “Just because there is forecast of heavy rains tourists won’t leave the state. We never had warnings of cloudburst,” he said. Whatever Bahuguna’s excuses, he hasn’t come out looking good in this crisis from day one. Previously Indian Express had reported that Bahuguna and his family had planned an official trip to Switzerland even as the crisis had struck the state. The report stated that the Ministry of External Affairs, from which permission had been sought for the trip by Bahuguna’s office, did not receive any request for cancellation till 19 June, nearly two days after the disaster struck.