In Union minister Anurag Thakur’s Himachal district, BJP loses all 5 Assembly seats

Thakur, who spent a considerable time in Himachal for the elections, campaigned extensively in Hamirpur district. The Dhumal family has its ancestral house in Samirpur village in the district, and the 78-year-old, also a three-time MP, too stepped out for the party. In an interview with The Indian Express just ahead of the release of the BJP’s poll manifesto, Dhumal had said that he had suggested to the party that it should announce a return to the Old Pension Scheme for at least the Class IV government employees.

The promise of doing the same for all employees is believed to have been one of the reasons in the Congress’s win.

Thakur’s poll pitch of crediting the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre with taking a number of pro-people initiatives does not appear to have cut much ice in Hamirpur. He talked about issues such as one rank one pension scheme, indigenous manufacturing of bullet-proof jackets for the Army, Rafael aircraft, as well as the Modi government’s abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir.

Of the five Assembly seats in Hamipur, Sujanpur was won by incumbent Congress MLA Rajinder Singh by 399 votes. The Congress’s Suresh Kumar won Bhoranj seat, in which Dhumal’s native village Samirpur falls, albeit by a slender margin of 60 votes, which might be this election’s lowest. In Nadaun, Congress nominee and one of its main CM contenders, Sukhvinder Sukhu, was the winner. The Hamirpur Assembly segment fight eventually turned out to be a contest between Congress nominee Pushpinder Verma and Congress rebel Ashish Sharma, who contested as Independent, with Sharma winning by 12,899 votes. Barsar seat saw the highest winning margin of the district, with Inder Dutt Lakhanpal of the Congress winning by 13,792 votes, even as the presence of a rebel may have hurt the BJP.

Dhumal had addressed the threat posed by rebellions in his interview, saying: “Even a single voter going out of party fold affects the party negatively. If there are rebels, they are definitely going to harm us. But when there is a possibility of a party coming to power, a number of candidates emerge and want tickets… These are the hazards of the game.”