Phone never stops ringing at this Met man’s desk

Uttarakhand's Met department Director Anand Sharma has become a person much sought out by the major political parties and leaders in the state.

Uttarakhand’s Met department Director Anand Sharma has become a person much sought out by the major political parties and leaders in the state.

For the past two days, his telephone has been ringing — the calls come from the Congress high command to top BJP leaders. Everyone wants to know his predictions.

As Uttarakhand gears up for the February 21 elections, rain and snow in the past two days here have put a dampener on the election rallies and meetings.

Story continues below this ad

For the second consecutive day today, all the proposed election rallies of the ruling Congress and the main opposition BJP were cancelled due to inclement weather.

“I received phone calls from Uttarakhand Chief Minister N D Tiwari, Congress general secretary Moti Lal Vora, BJP incharge and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and state NCP chief Suryakant Dhasmana. They all wanted to know about the weather conditions in the coming days,” Sharma said.

Tiwari, Vora and state Congress chief Harish Rawat kept on waiting for the weather to clear today so that they can fly to Kumaon region to address election rallies.

Similarly, BJP ‘s Prasad also could not use the helicopter to campaign.

Story continues below this ad

However, the biggest worry for the parties is the election meetings senior leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and BJP leaders L K Advani, Narendra Modi, Kalyan Singh and Hema Malini, are supposed to be addressing this week.

“The Prime Minister is scheduled to visit Kumoan and Hardwar region on February 13 and Sonia Gandhi on February 14. We are worried, but happy for the farmers as it is finally raining,” Congress spokesman Surendra Aggarwal said.

Sharma did try to explain to the politicians about the western disturbance, which caused widespread rains and snow. “They wanted to know when the weather will be clear to fly,” Anand Sharma said.

However, he did not disappoint them and predicted that the western disturbance will weaken and the weather hopefully would clear in the next 48 hours.