NEW DELHI: After winning Uttarakhand assembly polls belying the trends of change every five years, BJP is confident of repeating the same in Himachal Pradesh polls as the party once again banks on the charisma of PM Narendra Modi and welfare initiatives of the Centre. However, the party is facing a significant challenge in the form of a large number of rebels in the fray, many of whom were denied ticket for “non-performance” and also to accommodate a few who switched over from Congress.
The respite for the party is that rival Congress is also facing the same challenge with several rebels contesting the polls as independents. BJP president JP Nadda, who hails from Himachal, has been camping in the state for some time and is leading efforts to persuade the rebels to withdraw their nominations, the last date for which is October 29.
CM Jairam Thakur and Union minister Anurag Thakur have also been trying to pacify the rebels, whose presence has been taken seriously by the party leadership.
However, a party functionary said, “Himachal polity is mostly bipolar and people vote for symbols. Besides, only those who could not deliver in the past five years have been dropped. Therefore, our party doesn’t see rebels as a challenge.”
However, unlike bigger states, the margin of victory is often quite less in hill states and the presence of rebels cannot be ignored by the party leadership. So far 551 nominations have been filed of which more than 24 candidates from BJP and Congress are rebels. BJP won 44 of 68 seats in 2017.
But the margin of victory was less than 3000 in at least 20 constituencies, an issue which continues to worry the party leaders.
Prominent BJP rebels include former MP Maheshwar Singh (Kullu Sadar) and his son Hiteshwar Singh (Banjar). Former Rajya Sabha MP Kripal Parmar is in the fray from Fatehpur as an independent. Rebel former BJP MLAs include Tejwant Negi from Kinnaur and K L Thakur from Nalagarh. Other rebels are Praveen Sharma from Mandi Sadar, Subhash Sharma from Bilaspur Sadar, Abhishek Thakur from Sundernagar, Vipin Nehria from Dharamsala, Rajinder Dhirta from Rohru, Manohar Dhiman from Indora, Sanjeev Sharma from Badsar and Indra Kapoor from Chamba.
The Congress rebels include former ministers Gangu Ram Musafir from Pachhad and Kuldeep Kumar from Chintpurni. Subhash Manglet from Chopal, Tilak Raj from Bilaspur, Jagjivan Pal from Sullah and Biru Ram Kishore from Jhandutta are the other rebels.