Gairsain
Gairsain is a town in Chamoli district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand near state's summer capital Bhararisain. A town and Nagar Panchayat, Gairsain is situated at the eastern edge of the vast Dudhatoli mountain range, and is located in Chamoli district almost at the centre of the state, at a distance of approximately 250 kilometres from Dehradun. It is easily accessible from both the Garhwal and the Kumaon divisions, and in a way, acts as the bridge between the two regions. It is being considered as the future Permanent capital of Uttarakhand.
Gairsain was envisaged as the state capital during the statehood agitation. However, after the formation of the state on 9 November 2000, Dehradun was made the temporary capital of the state. The Government of Uttarakhand had constituted the Dixit Commission for the search of a permanent capital; but the commission in its report had noted that "the interim capital, Dehradun, is a more suitable place as the permanent capital owing to the factors like its distance from national capital, centralised population and safety from natural calamities". A three-day-long assembly session of Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly was held at Gairsain from 9 to 12 June 2014. With this event, hopes are high that its stature might be raised to that of the permanent capital of the state, in the near future.
Etymology
According to tradition, the name Gairsain is derived from the Garhwali words; Gair meaning 'at some depth' and Sain meaning 'rolling plains', referring to the somewhat flat land at some depth in otherwise hilly terrain. An adjoining village is named Gair and some attribute the name Gairsain as the deep plain area at the foot of Gair Village.History
Ancient history
In the ancient Indian literature, this area has been celebrated as Kedar Kshetra. The other tradition envisages that Himalayan country is said to be made up of five divisions one of which is Kedar Khanda which has been specifically dealt within the Kedar Khand section of Skand Puran. The Kunindas and Kiratas are also reported to have been inhabitants of this region. According to Hindu tradition the earliest King of this area seems to have been Kubera, the Lord of Yakshas. They were suppressed by Asuras who seem to have principally ruled over what is now Ukhimath. Prithu appears to have been the first King from the plains to visit these parts. After the Mahabharata war, Nagas, Kunindas, Kiratas, Tanganas and Khasas exercised control over this region. For more than a century the area fell under the empire of Kushanas and later on under the sway of Shilvarman, a powerful king who styled himself lord of the mountains. In course of time the Katyuri dynasty became a virtually indigenous ruling family of this region. Katyuri Kings ruled the present area from 9th to 11th centuries. The Katyuris were replaced by Chand Kings in Kumaon, while Garhwal was fragmented into several small principalities. Huen Tsang, the Chinese traveller, who visited the region around 629 AD, mentions a kingdom of Brahampura in the region.Gairsain remained under the sway of Parmar Rajputs of Garhwal during the Medivial period. The Garhwal state was founded in 823 AD, when Kanakpal, the prince of Malwa, on his visit to the Badrinath Temple, met the King Bhanu Pratap, a chieftain of Chandpur Garhi. The King later married his only daughter to the prince and subsequently handed over his kingdom, the fortress town. Kanakpal and his descendants of Parmar dynasty, gradually conquered all the independent fortresses belonging to its 52 small chieftains, and ruled the whole of Garhwal Kingdom for the next 915 years, up to 1804 AD. In 1358, the 37th ruler, Ajay Pal, brought all the minor principalities for the Garhwal region, under his own rule, and founded the Garhwal Kingdom, with Devalgarh as its capital, which he later shifted to Srinagar.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the bulk of this area was included in the domain of Fateh Shah, the Raja of Garhwal. He was followed by Dilip Sah, Upendra Sah and Pradeep Sah for over half a century. In the beginning of 1803, a severe earthquake occurred in Garhwal, destroying many houses and killing many people and cattle. Soon after this the Gorkha leaders Amar Singh Thapa, Hastidal Chutariya and some others invaded Garhwal with a large and well equipped army. Amar Singh Thapa was appointed Governor of the region. The Gorkhas were defeated by the British forces in the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814, and Gairsain along with other parts of Kumaon and Garhwal was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Sugauli. In 1839 the district of Garhwal came into existence after being separated from the Kumaon District. In 1919, this area came into prominence as a centre of political activity under the leadership of Anusuya Prasad Bahuguna, a leader who held public meetings against coolie-begar system. In 1930 the civil disobedience movement was made one occasion for launching individual Satyagraha against British Government. In 1947 the area along with rest of country won independence from British rule when it was part of the district British Garhwal also called Pauri Garhwal.
Founding
was the first person to propose Gairsain as the capital of a hill state in the 1960s. This place eventually began to be projected as the capital of the proposed state during the Uttarakhand state movement. In 1989, Dr. D.D. Pant and Bipin Tripathi accepted Gairsain as the proposed capital of Uttarakhand. An office of Directorate of Higher Education and Diet was inaugurated in Gairsain in 1991. The same year, three BJP ministers and MLAs supported the demand of a separate Uttarakhand state in a public meeting held in the town. The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, in the year 1992, formally declared Gairsain as the capital of the proposed state of Uttarakhand. UKD, In the honour of Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali, named this proposed capital region as Chandranagar. A hunger strike, which lasted for 157 days, was organised in the year 1994 in order to pressurise the government to announce Gairsain as the capital of Uttarakhand. The same year, a committee headed by Ramashankar Kaushik, which was constituted by then Mulayam Singh Yadav Government, recommended the creation of the hill state of Uttarakhand with Gairsain as its capital.After the formation of Uttarakhand on 9 November 2000, the demand for declaring Gairsain as the state capital started rising across the state. In 2000, the Uttarakhand Mahila Morcha took out a rally demanding Gairsain be made the state capital. Several public demonstrations followed this rally, and in a similar event held in Srinagar in 2002, the Gairsain Rajdhani Aandolana Samiti was established. Taking these movements into consideration, the Uttarakhand government constituted the Dikshit Commission under the chairmanship of Justice V. N. Dixit, whose work was to carry out a study among various cities of Uttarakhand, in order to find the most suitable place for the capital of Uttarakhand. The Dikshit Commission narrowed down the search to 5 cities: Dehradun, Kashipur, Ramnagar, Rishikesh and Gairsain; and after taking 8 years, submitted its 80-page report to the Uttarakhand Assembly on 17 August 2008. The commission found Dehradun and Kashipur eligible for the capital, noting "the interim capital, Dehradun, is a more suitable place as the permanent capital owing to the factors like its distance from national capital, centralised population and safety from natural calamities" and considering the odd geographical conditions, seismic data and other factors, disfavoured Gairsain as the permanent capital. Although, the whole state, baring plains, is in Seismic Zone-5
In 2012, the then Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Vijay Bahuguna organized a cabinet meeting in Gairsain. After the success of this meeting, the foundation stone of a new building for the Uttarakhand Assembly was set in the GIC Ground in the year 2013. The same year, Bhoomi Poojan Program was organized for the Vidhan Sabha Bhavan in Bhararisain, located about 14 km away from Gairsain. A three-day session of the Uttarakhand assembly was organized for the first time in this assembly building that was completed in 2014. In May 2014, a decision was taken by Uttarakhand government to constitute 'Gairsain Development Council' by merging the blocks of Gairsain in Chamoli and Chaukhutia in Almora, and by the end of the year, there were plans to develop Gairsain as the Summer capital of Uttarakhand.
File:Uttarakhand Divisions Map.png|thumb|left|Gairsain Division was proposed to be the third administrative division of the state after Garhwal and Kumaon
Gairsain was given the status of a Nagar Panchayat in 2015–2016. At the time of its establishment, the city was spread over an area of 7.53 sq. km, and had a population of 7,138 according to the 2011 Census of India. The proposal to develop Gairsain as the Summer capital of the state gained much acceptance by 2017. Another session of the Uttarakhand Cabinet was held in Gairsain in 2017 and the following year, the state government decided to set up an integrated township at Bhararisain. The entire complex was proposed to be developed on the green city concept, which would be equipped with several modern facilities on its sprawling campus including "residential apartments and commercial complexes, dispensaries, and schools, besides parks and playgrounds for children and youth".
On 4 March 2020, the chief minister of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat announced in the Legislative Assembly of the state during budget session that Bhararisain would be declared the summer Capital of the state. An official notification to this effect was issued on 8 June 2020 by the government after the then governor, Baby Rani Maurya gave her assent to the move. The Gairsain division was announced in March 2021. It was proposed to be the third administrative division of the state after Garhwal and Kumaon, and would include the districts of Almora, Bageshwar, Chamoli and Rudraprayag. However, the status was put on 'hold' by Uttarakhand Cabinet in April 2021.