Uttarakhand Kranti Dal

The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (translation: Uttarakhand Revolutionary Party; abbr. UKD), is a registered unrecognised regional political party in Uttarakhand, India. Founded in 1979, the party was built upon the aim of establishing a separate hill-state to combat administrative neglect and ensure sustainable development with respect to the sensitive ecology of the Himalayan region. Through the 80s and late 90s UKD became the principal leader of the Uttarakhand Statehood Movement and is credited by for bringing about the separation and creation of Uttarakhand as the 27th state of India on 9 November 2000.

In the present Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly, elected in 2022, it did not have any member as compared with one member in the previous 2012, three members in 2007 and four members in 2002 assembly elections of the state.

History
The UKD was established after an extended period of non-unified civil activism movements across Uttar the hilly districts of Uttar Pradesh on 26 July 1979 by Bipin Chandra Tripathi, Prof. Devi Datt Pant, Indramani Badoni and Kashi Singh Airy at Nanital. The party was formed under the leadership of some of the major political forces within the region and aimed at promoting unified activism to struggle for a separate state composed of the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh.

The founding convention was chaired by Prof. Devi Datt Pant, former vice-chancellor of Kumaon University. Under the young leadership of Kashi Singh Airy who took the charge of struggle and public agitations.

In 1988, Badoni did a 105-day foot march under the banner of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal. This procession ran from Tawaghat in Pithoragarh to Dehradun. He went from door to door in the village and told the people the benefits of a separate state. In 1992, he declared Gairsain the capital of Uttarakhand on the day of Makar Sankranti in Bageshwar.

The Uttarakhand Movement soon bore fruition after various cases of police administrative and police brutality in the later half of the movement, when the separate Uttaranchal state was formed on 9 November 2000 by the then BJP lead government. The change in state name to "Uttaranchal" garnered widespread criticism from UKD representatives and civilian activists for being an attempt at diluting the sacrifice of regional groups like the UKD.

However, in the first-ever state assembly elections in 2002, the party won only four out of 70 seats and was outmaneuvered by the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, both despite being latecomers to the Uttarakhand statehood movement, succeeded in capturing its momentum for electoral gain and formed governments in the state.

Leadership
The party's current face is Kashi Singh Airy, a prominent leader of the Uttarakhand statehood movement and a senior leader of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, who was elected for Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly three times (1985–1989, 1989–1991, 1993–1996) from Didihat and was elected for first Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly. The executive president of the party is Surendra Kukreti—senior statehood activist and prominent face of Uttarakhand statehood movement who fought from the forefront in the creation of Uttarakhand state. Jaswant Singh Bisht was the first elected MLA of the party from Ranikhet constituency. Other personalities include Indramani Badoni, Devi Datt Pant, Bipin Chandra Tripathi and Diwakar Bhatt who were among the founding members and long time agitators for the Uttarakhand statehood movement.

Factionalism and decline
In the 2012 Uttarakhand Assembly election, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal contested as Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (P) led by then party president Trivendra Singh Panwar. The original party name and the election symbol (chair) was frozen by the Election Commission of India following the factionalism and leadership dispute within the party that led to its breakup. The splinter group Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (D) led by former MLA and Cabinet Minister in the Khanduri government and later Pokhriyal government, Diwakar Bhatt broke away from the UKD with his supporters claiming the original party leadership. Pritam Singh Panwar was the only winning candidate of the party in the 2012 Assembly election, who ran under the UKD(P) banner.

Uttarakhand Kranti Dal's original name and party symbol were restored in 2017 with the merger of both groups.

The party's performance in various assembly and parliamentary elections has been on a consistent decline. The main reasons cited for UKD's decline in the politics of Uttarakhand are; inner factionalism, loss of voter base to other parties and frequent switching for power share between the BJP and Congress governments, which is often viewed negatively as political opportunism.

Legacy
The party has taken on various campaigns in the past geared towards the social and economic upliftment of the Pahari people. The party has embraced a number of causes of concern to the diversity of people living in Uttarakhand, defining the Uttarakhandi identity in broad and inclusive terms. As such, its ideology of civic as opposed to ethnic nationalism can be compared to other centre-left nationalist parties like the Scottish National Party or the Plaid Cymru, although its orientation and goals are emphatically non-secessionist.

The party has been among the most active campaigners of the bhu Kanoon Movement and campaigned heavily to ensure judicial justice in the Ankita Bhandari Murder case.