Uttarakhand is likely to witness a cabinet reshuffle ahead of the 2027 state assembly elections, sources revealed on Saturday. The reshuffle is expected to take place either before or after the Holi festival, with discussions currently underway between the Chief Minister and the party leadership in New Delhi and Dehradun.
The Chief Minister recently returned to Dehradun after a two-day visit to the national capital, where he held the first round of talks with state in-charge Dushyant Gautam and other senior leaders on the proposed changes in the cabinet.
Meanwhile, in a separate development, Uttarakhand Finance Minister Premchand Agarwal has been nominated as a member of the Group of Ministers (GoM) set up to explore the possibility of imposing a special disaster cess in cases of natural calamities.
The seven-member GoM, constituted by the GST Council, includes Finance Minister Suresh Kumar Khanna of Uttar Pradesh, Premchand Agarwal of Uttarakhand, Ajanta Neog of Assam, OP Choudhary of Chhattisgarh, Kanubhai Desai of Gujarat, KN Balagopal of Kerala, and Chandrima Bhattacharya of West Bengal.
The panel will evaluate the legal and constitutional provisions for imposing such a cess and establish a framework to classify an event as a natural calamity, making it eligible for the imposition of a special tax under the GST regime.
