Nadda may be BJP’s CM face for Himachal
The BJP wants to present a relatively young face for the post, moving beyond Prem Kumar Dhumal and Shanta Kumar.
Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Jagat Prakash Nadda, who is a Rajya Sabha member from Himachal Pradesh and a member of the all powerful parliamentary board of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is likely to be made the party’s chief ministerial face for the Assembly elections in the state due at the end of this year, party sources said.
Nadda has extensive experience of working in the state as he was first elected to the Himachal Pradesh Assembly in 1993, then in 1998 when he served as the Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs, and then again in 2007 when he was made the Forest, Environment, Science and Technology minister.
The BJP wants to move beyond the old leadership in Himachal Pradesh and present a relatively young face for the CM’s post, senior party leaders who are active in the state have hinted. In the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the Congress had won 36 seats in the 2012 elections under the leadership of Virbhadra Singh, defeating BJP veteran Prem Kumar Dhumal, who is the present Leader of Opposition in the state. Party leaders who are camping in the hill state said that the time had come to look beyond Dhumal and present a young face in a state where a majority of 68 lakh people were young.
“The state is looking for a change which is evident from the fact that after 33 years, we were able to win the mayor seat in Shimla municipal corporation, which is one of the most prestigious and oldest municipalities in the country. The party is looking towards the future and we have utmost respect for the 73-year- old Dhumal and Shanta Kumar as they have helped the party become what it is in this state,” a party functionary said. Shanta Kumar, 83, who has also been the Chief Minister of the state, is a Lok Sabha MP from Kangra.
Nadda, 56, who has risen from an RSS background, has been closely associated with the ABVP, the RSS’ students’ wing, during his student and college days in Patna, where his father Narain Lal Nadda was the head of applied economics and commerce in Patna University and an honorary major in the NCC in the late 1970s. He later became the Vice Chancellor of Ranchi University in 1977. A committed RSS worker, both father and son would attend RSS sakhas religiously at the time.
Mangal Pandey, senior BJP leader and former Bihar BJP state president, who was appointed as the Himachal Pradesh party incharge two months ago, said that the party was working in the state with the objective of winning over 50 seats.
“Our slogan is ‘ Abki baar pachaas (50) ke paar’. Lack of development and massive corruption are the two issues on which we will corner this government. Development has virtually stopped in the state since the past five years and every senior official, right up to the CM, is involved in corruption. My job is to prepare the party for elections. Who will be the CM will be decided by the parliamentary board after we win over 50 seats,” Pandey told The Sunday Guardian.
Party leaders said that Anurag Thakur, who is the son of Dhumal and the parliamentarian from Hamirpur constituency, is likely to be inducted into the Union Cabinet to placate a faction within the state leadership owing allegiance to Dhumal who wants Anurag to be made the CM face. “He (Anurag) still has distances to cover and his excessive interest in other things (cricket) is something that makes him unsuitable for the post of CM right now,” a senior party functionary said.