Turncoats to battle it out in Himachal Assembly bypolls
With Himachal Pradesh getting ready for byelections to six Assembly constituencies, simultaneously with the Lok Sabha poll on June 1, the stage is set for a direct ght between the ruling Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after the former declared another list of two more candidates for the bypolls.
With its latest list, in which the Congress announced the names of candidates for Lahaul-Spiti and Barsar Assembly constituencies, the party has so far named candidates for ve of the six Assembly seats in in the State. The Congress has elded Anuradha Rana, a district council (Zila Parishad) chairperson from Lahaul and Spiti seat and Subash Chand from Barsar constituency.
Ms. Rana has been pitted against BJP’s Ravi Thakur while Mr. Chand will take on Inder Dutt Lakhanpal of BJP.
The Congress is yet to declare its candidate for the Dharamshala Assembly constituency from where the BJP has elded Sudhir Sharma, one of the
Six rebels from the Congress have been elded by the BJP in the byelection
Congress turncoats.
Earlier this year, the Congress-ruled State saw political turbulence amid cracks in the State unit, that came to the fore during the recent Rajya Sabha election, resulting in the defeat of Abhishek Manu Singhvi — the o©cial Congress candidate — due to cross-voting by six MLAs of the ruling party.
Rebels disquali ed
The by-elections for the six Assembly constituencies are being held after the six seats fell vacant following the disqualication of the then six Congress MLAs from the Assembly for defying the party whip.
Later, all the six Congress rebels joined the BJP and are now contesting as candidates from that party in the bypolls.
Among other candidates, the Congress has announced Captian Ranjit Singh from the Sujanpur seat while Rakesh Kalia from Gagret, and Vivek Sharma from the Kutlehar Assembly constituency.