A product of the people’s movement, Uttarakhand, a hill state with 10 hill districts and 3 plain districts, and projected to have a population of 1.25 crores by 2025, will complete twenty-five years on November 9, making it no longer a young state. Neglect in infrastructural development, medical facilities, educational and employment opportunities, isolation, migration of able-bodied youth, and the demand for a capital in the hills led to a significant people’s movement in 1994 for their own state. Uttarakhand was finally established with its temporary capital at Dehradun. The main reason for not choosing Gairsain over Dehradun as the temporary capital was the lack of infrastructure. Currently, ceremonial sessions are held in an assembly building constructed at Gairsain, but Dehradun remains the capital. As Uttarakhand approaches its twenty-fifth anniversary, it is crucial to assess whether the objectives for which even women sacrificed their lives have been met or if the hill regions still face the same issues.

Politically, in twenty-five years, Uttarakhand has seen ten chief ministers, starting from Nityananda Swami in 2000 to the current chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who has been in office since 2021. Only Narayan Dutt Tiwari completed a full five-year term, indicating an unstable political landscape with internal rivalries and horse-trading within the BJP and Congress. The two-party system seems almost non-existent due to a leadership crisis in Congress and the tendency of leaders to frequently change affiliations. Socio-political divides based on caste and friction between hill and plain areas........

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