THE RETURN OF THE BJP

HIMACHAL HAS ALMOST NEVER REPEATED A GOVERNMENT. THIS ELECTION MAY USHER IN A GENERATIONAL SHIFT AS WELL AS BOTH VIRBHADRA AND DHUMAL LICK THEIR WOUNDS

The BJP storms to victory in Himachal Pradesh as the state maintains its tradition of rotating power

ON THE CONCLUDING DAY OF THE 12TH Vidhan Sabha on August 25, Virbhadra Singh told Prem Kumar Dhumal: “I will not be in these elections, but all the best to you.” Evidently feeling humiliated with the Congress high command’s delay in naming him the party’s chief ministerial face, Singh told the former BJP CM that he did “not expect to be in the next Vidhan Sabha”.

Four months later, 83-year-old Singh is back in the house, albeit, in the Opposition. But 73-year-old Dhumal finds himself in political limbo, having ignominiously lost his own election, while the campaign he so ably helped craft won the BJP one of its biggest electoral victories in the state. The saffron party made a blistering comeback with 44 of the 68 assembly seats while the Congress was left gasping with a humiliating tally of just 21.

The BJP’s shining victory, widely expected and for once accurately called by exit pollsters, comes with a bit of a dark shadow in the defeat of the man who party chief Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised would be chief minister. “Dhumalji is a former CM and the leader of the Opposition, but after December 18, he will be your chief minister!” Shah announced at a poll rally in Rajgarh. The belated proclamation, coming barely nine days before polling, had evidently pleased the saffron supporters, who erupted into sloganeering, “Modiji ko Jai Shri Ram! Dhumalji ko Jai Shri Ram!”

Dhumal’s defeat at the hands of his one-time protégé Rajinder Rana, many within the Himachal BJP now admit, was almost as predictable as the saffron party’s overall victory. Literally pushed into leaving the safety of his traditional bastion of Hamirpur for Sujanpur—a seat that the BJP has never won—the former chief minister had his hands full. Besides finding himself in unfamiliar territory, in Rana, he found himself facing a grassroots politician, who had won Sujanpur as an independent candidate in 2012, before joining the Congress.

Obliquely alluding to the BJP leadership’s obvious reluctance to announce a chief ministerial face and the open rallying around other names, notably Union health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda, some commentators have even gone so far as to describe Dhumal’s ‘ouster’ as a well-calibrated “political assassination”. Perhaps that is going too far. But the ‘others’ were clearly in the race: “The people should decide [who they want as CM],” Nadda told india today in an interview on November 29, two days before Amit Shah named Dhumal.

Widely seen as the only Himachal BJP leader of stature with a popular connect across the state, Dhumal’s selection gave the party a much-needed fillip in the final countdown to the polls. Besides enthusing BJP cadres, it also served to reassure voters on who the leader was.

Grabbing far fewer eyeballs nationally as com-