In prestige battle for Himachal bypolls, Anurag Thakur goes all out to reverse Hamirpur setback

On Saturday, Thakur was in Dehra, where he held various meetings as part of his campaign for BJP candidate Hoshyar Singh Chambyal.

Himachal CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur is making her electoral debut from the Dehra seat on the Congress’s ticket.

Apart from Dehra, Sukhu has also stepped up his campaign for the Congress candidates in two other seats. He is seeing these bypolls as a prestige battle as he hails from Hamirpur district’s Nadaun, which he also represents in the Assembly. Deputy CM Mukesh Agnihotri’s Haroli seat also falls in the same district.

The bypolls were necessitated as these seats fell vacant after three Independent MLAs – who had voted in favour of BJP nominee in the February Rajya Sabha polls, Harsh Mahajan – resigned and went on to join the BJP. They have been fielded by the BJP from their respective seats for the bypolls – K L Sharma from Hamirpur, K L Thakur from Nalagarh, and Hoshyar Singh Chambyal from Dehra.

Sukhu is aiming to clinch these bypolls so as to send out a message about the Congress’s hold in the state amid discontent in the party.

In February this year, six of the Congress MLAs had turned rebel and cross-voted for Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha polls. They were suspended from the party. The elections to their seats were held along with the state’s four parliamentary constituencies in the final phase of the Lok Sabha polls on June 1.

Of these six Assembly seat bypolls, the Congress won four as against the BJP’s two. Four of these six seats were part of the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat, of which the Congress won three and the BJP got one.

This boosted the Congress’s tally in the state Assembly, which is now 38 in the current 65-member House as compared to the BJP’s 27. Sukhu has since emerged stronger, even as he needs some more bypoll wins to further consolidate the Congress government – and his position – in the state.

It is another matter that the BJP again bagged all four Lok Sabha seats in the state.

On his part, Thakur wants to ensure the BJP’s victory in the bypolls to send out a signal that he continues to hold sway in the Hamirpur region and could pull off wins in the Assembly seats too.

In the Lok Sabha elections, while Thakur defeated Congress candidate Satpal Raizada with a margin of 1.82 lakh votes in Hamirpur and got leads in all its 17 Assembly segments, this could not then translate in the bypolls held in his constituency simultaneously.

Then, the Congress’s Rakesh Kalia won from Gagret, defeating the BJP’s Chaitanya Sharma by 8,487 votes. The Congress’s Capt Ranjeet Singh clinched Sujanpur seat by defeating the BJP’s Rajinder Rana by 2,440 votes. In Kutlehar, Vivek Sharma of the Congress trounced the BJP’s Davinder Bhutto by 5,356 votes.

A senior BJP leader admits that the BJP’s losses in the June 1 bypolls were a blow to the party. “The defeat of the BJP candidates in three Assembly constituencies within the Hamirpur parliamentary seat, where Anurag Thakur had garnered considerable votes, was discussed at length during various post-election review meetings of the party. Serious discussions were held to analyse why Thakur managed to get leads in these Assembly segments, but the Assembly bypoll candidates did not.”

Another BJP leader said the party performed poorly in the June 1 bypolls due to “resentment among the BJP cadre who were unhappy about inducting Congress rebels and turncoats into the party fold.”