A sharp political charge from the hills: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami accused the Indian National Congress on Sunday, 27 September 2026, of deliberately casting a recent incident in Haldwani in caste terms — a move he says is designed to fracture the state's social fabric.

Posting in Hindi on X, CM Dhami wrote: 'Kaangres ne Haldwani ki ghatna ko jaatiya rang dekar samaaj ko baantne ki koshish ki.' — 'Congress tried to divide society by giving a caste colour to the Haldwani incident. Searching for caste in every issue is becoming part of their politics, whereas Uttarakhand's identity has always been one of social harmony and brotherhood.'

Haldwani at the centre of a political flashpoint

Haldwani, the largest commercial town in Nainital district, has periodically been the site of law-and-order incidents that draw competing political readings. When such events occur, the interpretive battle between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress often begins within hours — each side framing the episode to suit its electoral narrative. Dhami's post follows that familiar pattern, moving quickly to contest the framing before it hardens in public discourse.

The Chief Minister's pushback is pointed: he does not dispute that an incident occurred, but he rejects the caste lens entirely, positioning it as an opportunistic graft onto what he describes as an otherwise cohesive society. That distinction — between acknowledging an event and accepting its opposition-supplied interpretation — is doing the real political work here.

BJP's anti-caste-politics playbook in Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand, carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, has historically seen less overt caste arithmetic than its neighbour states. The BJP has leaned into a pahari (hill people) identity narrative that cuts across jati lines, and since the party's landslide win in the 2022 assembly elections, Dhami's government has framed major initiatives — from the Uniform Civil Code to anti-encroachment drives — around development and legal uniformity rather than community identity.

Nationally, the BJP has repeatedly positioned itself against caste-based mobilisation by opposition parties, casting such appeals as divisive rather than corrective. Dhami's post slots neatly into that wider argument: Congress, the charge goes, reaches for caste as its default tool whenever a local incident provides an opening, and doing so in Uttarakhand — a state it frames as a model of communal and caste harmony — makes the offence doubly cynical in the BJP's telling.

The 2027 election shadow

With Uttarakhand assembly elections due in 2027, the interpretive contest over every significant local incident will intensify. A law-and-order episode in Haldwani — a city that bridges the hills and the plains and carries genuine demographic complexity — is exactly the kind of event both parties will fight to define. Dhami's rapid public rebuttal signals that his government intends to hold the 'harmony' narrative tightly, leaving no space for the opposition's framing to settle.

Whether an official inquiry into the Haldwani incident surfaces findings that complicate either side's story remains the question that could reopen this chapter before the campaign season begins in earnest.