Uttaranchal: In spite of a new state now, why are the agitators unhappy?

When Uttaranchal's first Chief Minister Nityanand Swami recently reached the new state's capital, Dehradun, the welcome he got was less than rousing. The town wore a deserted look; no banners or hoardings were in evidence. Of the BJP's 17 MLAs, only one had come to the railway station to receive him. The mood all round was one of discontent.

Normally, the creation of a separate state should have been a festive occasion, but there has been very little of that in Uttaranchal's case. Instead, battle lines are being drawn once again. "Our boys did not sacrifice their lives during the Uttarakhand agitation to get a state with its capital in the plains and to have a governor and a chief minister imposed on us by Delhi," said an angry Shamsher Bahadur Singh Bisht of the Jan Sangharsh Morcha, the organisation that was in the forefront of the agitation for a separate state in the 1990s.Any euphoria over the creation of the new state vanished the moment the BJP central leadership announced that the 74-year-old Swami would be Uttaranchal's first chief minister."How can we accept him? He joined the BJP not very long ago. And he does not belong to the hills," lamented Vimla Negi, convener of the BJP Mahila Morcha.