Himachal Pradesh Sends Strong Signals Ahead of By-polls

The political temperatures in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh continue to soar. Three more by-polls are due to be held here on July 10. The Congress is now on a level playing field after having secured the survival of the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led government by winning four of the six Assembly by-polls that were held alongside the Lok Sabha elections.

The Lok Sabha elections were swept by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, now the BJP is getting tangled in a self-created trap and the contradictions within the party are coming out in the open. Yet another dimension has been added to the state politics with the Congress deciding to field Sukhu’s wife on one of the Assembly seats. The hill state is once again sending out strong political signals.

It is essential to understand how these by-polls were necessitated. It started with the elections for the Rajya Sabha seat in February where six Congress MLAs had voted in favour of the BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan. He was fielded against Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress.

Mahajan went on to win by a ‘toss’ that followed a tie since the Congress strength was reduced to 34 in the 68 member House. Singhvi along with senior Congress leader D. K. Sivakumar played a masterstroke wherein the six MLAs were suspended by the Speaker for defying the whip on voting for the state budget and the finance bill.

These six MLAs went on to join the BJP and were declared as the party candidates for the by-polls that were held alongside the Lok Sabha polls. Their suspension ensured the survival of the state government as the house strength got reduced to 62 and the Congress had 34 MLAs.

Meanwhile, three independents Hoshiyar Singh from Dehra, K. L. Thakur from Nalagarh and Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur seats who had also voted in favour of Mahajan too had submitted their resignation hoping to get the party ticket and contest alongside the Lok Sabha polls as the BJP candidates.

Here too the Congress played a political move wherein the Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania did not accept their resignation following complaints that they had done so under duress. They were forced to go to the High Court hoping to get an early verdict so that they could contest alongside the six Congress rebels.

Simultaneously, revenue minister Jagat Singh Negi had also filed a petition saying that the Speaker disqualify the three under anti defection law as they had joined the BJP immediately after tendering their resignation.

The Speaker accepted their resignation on June 3, a day prior to the Lok Sabha and six by-poll results.

The BJP has fielded the three as its candidates for the by-polls scheduled for July 10 while the Congress has announced the candidature of Dr Pushpendra Verma for Hamirpur, Hardeep Singh Bawa for Nalagarh and Kamlesh Thakur, who is Sukhu’s wife, from Dehra seats. Both Verma and Bawa were the losing candidates in the 2022 Assembly polls.

The BJP is facing internal discontent on the fielding of the three independents as the party candidates. Party leaders have reportedly been airing their grouse even as the leadership is making efforts to mollify them. Observers feel that the BJP has fallen in its own trap and the scenario that has unravelled in the last almost four months is definitely not to its advantage.

“They had laid a trap to reduce the state government to a minority by inducing simultaneous by-polls on nine seats but the counter moves checked their designs. Having won four of the earlier six by-polls, the Congress has ensured the survival of its government. On the other side the BJP faces discontent in its ranks by fielding the three independents. Party leaders are openly speaking out against the top leadership for this mess,” a Shimla based senior political observer said.

Meanwhile, simultaneous developments within the saffron fold are being deciphered through the prism of the weakening of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah at the Centre as the BJP failed to achieve majority on its own during the Lok Sabha polls and is now dependent on its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners.

To begin with, the party supporters and the commoners are still trying to gauge the reason for the ouster of Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur from the Union Cabinet even after having won five consecutive Lok Sabha polls from the seat. Many feel that his ‘utility as a polarising factor’ was over.

Some others point to the message that reportedly went around in his constituency ahead of the Lok Sabha conveying to the electorate “one vote for PM (Prime Minister) and one for CM (Chief Minister)”. The Assembly constituency of Sujanpur had also gone to by-poll alongside the Lok Sabha polls where BJP candidate Rajender Singh Rana lost to Captain Ranjit Singh Rana of the Congress by 2440 votes. Rajender was the erstwhile Congress leader who had humbled former chief minister and Anurag’s father Prem Kumar Dhumal on this seat in 2017 Assembly polls.

It needs to be kept in mind that while Anurag has strengthened his position by securing a fifth consecutive Lok Sabha win, his seat is also the home turf of BJP’s national president Jagat Prakash Nadda who now finds a place in the Union Cabinet. Nadda hails from Bilaspur and is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat which is the home turf of Modi and Shah.

It is being interpreted that he has been accommodated in the Union Ministry as he has already completed his stipulated term as the BJP president and is currently on an extension.

Coming back to the July by-polls, the BJP has been attacking the Congress for imposing these three by-polls beyond those held alongside the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress on the other hand is trying to make the BJP accountable for imposing the by-polls in its quest to destabilise the state government and trying to topple it.

With the former CM Jairam Thakur leading the charge for the BJP, the party is attacking the state government under Sukhu for “not delivering on the promises made ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls, the deteriorating law and order situation, prevailing water crisis and the rampant forest fires”.

Jairam has also been playing up the BJP making a clean sweep in the state by winning all the four Lok Sabha seats. He said in a tweet, “Congress which came to power by deceiving the people has now been rejected by the people. The biggest example of this is the Lok Sabha elections. By making the BJP win in the home constituencies of the Chief Minister and ministers, the public has given a clear message that this government of friends will no longer continue.”

He has also claimed that, “The government closed down the Swavalamban scheme which created employment opportunities for thousands of people. Before the elections, it talked about providing employment to the youth by launching a startup scheme. It has been one and a half years since the government was formed and till now not a single person has benefited from this scheme.”

The Congress on the other hand has been expressing confidence on winning the three by-polls. Party’s working president and chief parliamentary secretary Sanjay Awasthi said on Tuesday, “The public opinion in the state is with the Congress. The BJP will have to face a crushing defeat in these three by-elections.”

Sukhu’s media advisor Naresh Chauhan has stated the people of the state have completely rejected the ‘politics of horse-trading’ of the BJP by winning four seats in the by-elections held recently in six assembly constituencies.

He said that the voters have given a befitting reply to the supporters of ‘money power politics’ by rejecting four out of the six persons with whom Jairam Thakur had conspired to ‘topple the government’. “The people of Himachal do not like this kind of politics. The public sends its representative to the Vidhan Sabha for five years to advocate the interests of the concerned area and putting one's membership at stake for personal benefits is a betrayal of the public,” he said.

The political broth in the state continues to simmer, promising a lot more in the days to come.

Cover Photograph PTI