CONGRESS LIKELY TO ANNOUNCE CANDIDATES IN REMAINING TWO LOK SABHA SEATS OF HIMACHAL SHORTLY
SHIMLA: Congress party's tickets for Hamirpur and Kangra Lok Sabha seats can be decided in a day or two, while the tickets for assembly by-elections on six seats will have to wait for a few more days. Chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Wednesday went to New Delhi and it is expected that soon the Lok Sabha tickets for remaining seats would be announced by the central election committee. So far Congress has declared candidates on Shimla and Mandi parliamentary seats only. Sukhu said that discussions on tickets are going on and soon the candidates will be announced.
While interacting with media persons before heading for Delhi, Sukhu said that even though the names of the candidates have not been announced, Congress is already busy campaigning. He said that he himself is touring different parts of the state for campaigning. He said that in the last couple of days, he has toured Dharamshala and Sujanpur assembly seats where by-elections are being held along with four other assembly seats.
He said that Congress will go to the people's court against the horse-trading of MLAs done by BJP in Himachal Pradesh. He said that in this election, the BJP's attempt to kill democracy and grab the seat of power on the basis of money will be the main issue. “Apart from that, we will take the developmental and public welfare works done by our government in the last fifteen months to the people’s court,” he added.
BJP has already announced candidates on all four parliamentary seats of Mandi, Shimla, Kangra and Hamirpur along with six assembly seats of Sujanpur, Dharamshala, Barsar, Lahaul-Spiti, Gagret and Kutlehar. In the assembly-election, BJP fielded the disqualified Congress MLAs who in the Rajya Sabha election had cross voted for BJP candidate on February 27. These rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified by the Assembly Speaker under the provisions of anti-defection law for defying the whip issued by the party during the budget session.
According to sources, while deciding the candidates for the remaining Lok Sabha seats of Kangra and Hamirpur, the Congress leadership beside seeing the winning ability of a candidate is also weighing the option of striking caste balance and can field a Brahmin face from any of the seats.
From Kangra parliamentary seat, names of former minister Asha Kumari and Nagrota MLA and HPTDC chairman R S Bali are doing the rounds while from Hamirpur seat earlier name of former Una MLA Satpal Raizada was doing the rounds but now party wants to field a stronger candidate against BJP’s heavy weight candidate Anurag Thakur who is contesting his fifth consecutive election from here.