Uttarakhand goes to polls on February 15 where both the Congress and the BJP will contest for 70 seats.
For Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, the last day of nominations brought with it a historic 'first'. After filing his nomination from Kichcha on Tuesday, the Chief Minister on Friday filed his nomination from Haridwar Rural, one of the 11 assembly seats in Haridwar district, where he won the Lok Sabha polls in 2009.
With this, Mr Rawat becomes the first state chief minister to be fielded from two assembly constituencies in Uttarakhand, something he claims, is a strategic imperative.
"These two districts (Haridwar and Udhum Singh Nagar) are the pillars of our states' development. Out of 70 seats, 20 seats are in these two districts so it is a sizeable share", the chief minister told NDTV.
The last one week has seen the chief minister travel over 400 kilometres across Uttarakhand where he has been leading the Uttarakhand Swabhimaan Yatra to reclaim the spirit of the state dogged by the political instability of the past two years.
"For the last two and a half years I have had a terrible time. I have had to compromise on many counts," said Mr Rawat, who was made chief minister in 2014 after the untimely expulsion of Vijay Bahuguna, his predecessor, over the mishandling of relief operations in the aftermath of the 2013 Kedarnath disaster.
Mr Bahuguna, along with senior leaders like Harak Singh Rawat, Subodh Uniyal and Yashpal Arya, to name a few, form part of a group of leaders that has since defected to the BJP leaving the ruling Congress in disarray. But Mr Rawat doesn't think so.
"After these defectors I feel at least I will be able to perform to my fullest now," said Mr Rawat.
Vote-shares and seat distribution are major concerns for the Congress party that currently has only two elected members from the 20 seats in Haridwar and Udhum Singh Nagar. A large number of these seats were earlier held by the 'turncoat' leaders, 10 of whom have been fielded by the opposition BJP in the forthcoming elections.
Asked if he felt a threat from his own former colleagues, now rivals, Mr Rawat said, "It is the primary duty of a CM to maintain a majority in the secretariat and I have lived up to that. People often wonder what is Harish Rawat's formula. But if the people of the state feel I should deliver, they should give me a clear mandate. This election is as much about prestige as it is about leadership", said the 69-year-old chief minister.
According to Mr Rawat, the price of the political instability in the state in former months has been paid by the development process. "Modiji came to Dehradun. But it seems like he finds it hard to admit our concerns in Delhi. Our proposal to develop an SEZ in the Bhagirathi valley has been stalled by the centre," he said.
In the same breath, the chief minister adds, "I respect and admire Narendra Modi; I am only a small chief minister of a small state. Modiji talks about cooperative federalism, I would like to tell him that we are also part of that team."
So what is Harish Rawat's immediate vision for the state? "If elected, I promise a government that is 'bhrashtachar mukt aur rozgar yukt' (corruption free and employment generating)," he says.
"The Congress has decided to include in its manifesto that by 2020, a job will be given to one member of every family. By 2020 we will also ensure that one woman of every household is linked to a bank in terms of employment. We want to create a model of human development which will make our little hill-state an ideal model," Mr Rawat adds.
"People should vote keeping in mind their future but also the challenges we have had to face in the past. There were so many attempts to derail us. Some would even call them sabotage. We have weathered the storms," he says.
Uttarakhand goes to polls on February 15 in a contest where both the ruling Congress and the BJP will contest for 70 seats. The test will be crucial for the Congress, which has been in power since 2012 but has yet produced only one chief minister who has lasted a full five year term. The last and only chief minister to have lasted a full five year term was ND Tiwari, a Congress chief minister with a term from 2002 to 2007.