Shimla, Sept 6
The sitting MLA’s of Congress party in Himachal Pradesh have been given green signal for the ticket of the upcoming Vidhan Sabha polls. In an important meeting of the State Congress Election Committee held in Delhi to finalize the names of the candidates in the upcoming Legislative Assembly elections, the committee has given the green signal to the tickets of all the sitting Congress MLAs.
The Congress party currently has 20 MLAs in the state assembly. Two MLAs Lakhwinder Singh Rana from Nalagarh and Pawan Kajal from Kangra have left the Congress and joined the BJP.
Apart from this, tickets for the secretaries of All India Congress have also been cleared. The ticket of working president Chandra Kumar is also probably confirmed. Former MP Chandra Kumar was made the working president of the state Congress after Pawan Kajal joined the BJP.
Even Sudhir Sharma’s ticket from Dharamshala has also been confirmed. There was a lot of speculation about him going to the BJP.
Apart from this, sources inform that the election committee has also stamped the tickets of Raghubir Singh Bali, son of former minister GS Bali from Nagrota Bagwan and Rajesh Dharmani, former MLA from Ghumarwin.
According to the members of the election committee, apart from these, the Congress has agreed on the candidates on 35 to 40 seats.
A meeting of the State Election Committee was held in Delhi under the chairmanship of State Congress President Pratibha Singh, in which state in-charge Rajiv Shukla, Sanjay Dutt, besides former Union Minister and G-23 group member Anand Sharma also attended.
It is understood that Viplov Thakur, the president of the State Disciplinary Committee, may not contest the elections. She has already refused to contest the election.
Most of the big leaders of the state had gone to Delhi on the call of the All India Congress Committee in Delhi during the last day to protest. Election committee meeting was held on Monday. After much deliberation in the meeting of the committee, it was decided to give tickets to the sitting MLAs.
After Lakhwinder Rana and Pawan Kajal joined the BJP in the Congress, the Congress was afraid that other party MLAs might too, switch sides and join the BJP camp.The names of Congress Rajendra Rana from Sujanpur had cropped up a lot in this regard. Perhaps this is being said to be the reason why the Congress has tried to make arrangements for its sitting MLA’s, not to join the BJP.
According to sources, an agreement has been reached in the Congress on about 40 tickets. Now in 28 seats, the head is to be broken in the Congress.
Out of these, everyone’s eyes are on whether the former state Congress President Kuldeep Singh Rathore gets the ticket from Theog of Shimla or not. Here even though the former party president is claiming for ticket, but the recent joining of Indu Verma wife of BJP MLA late Rakesh Verma has changed tables. Here, there are speculations that most likely she may become the congress party candidate against the lone leftist MLA Rakesh Singha.
There will also be an eye on Shimla Urban seat too, as here in the previous polls the party candidate(Harbhajjan Singh Bhajji) came 4th in the contest, wherein the party rebel Harish Janartha though lost, came 2nd but produced a neck to neck contest with current BJP MLA Suresh Bhardwaj. Even ticket finalisation on Kasauli seat is also being awaited eagerly by Congress members.
However, so far the Congress party has taken an edge over the BJP in this matter, by agreeing on the names of its candidates.
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