BJP wants ‘dirty tricks’ dept to get activated in Himachal Pradesh, says Abhishek Manu Singhvi
Aditi Tandon
New Delhi February 18
Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the Congress candidate for February 27 Rajya Sabha election, on Sunday said the BJP was out to activate its dirty tricks department in the hill state.
Singhvi was speaking in reference to the nomination of former minister in the late Virbhadra Singh government Harsh Mahajan as a BJP candidate against him in the upcoming RS poll for one seat.
The Congress leader rebuts ‘outsider’ argument saying the law to do away with the requirement that a candidate must reside in the state to be eligible for the RS nomination from there was brought by the erstwhile NDA government in 2003
“I do not want to say much before the elections but it is obvious that if a 25-member party (the BJP) sets up a candidate against a 43-member party (the Congress) then the clear declaration by the 25-member party is that they want their dirty tricks department to get active. This is the worst form of political debauchery and unfortunately only one party practices it,” Singhvi told The Tribune today.
BJP sources, meanwhile, sounded confident of Mahajan’s win, with one leader saying: “We do not fight to lose.”
Singhvi, for his part, is in touch with all 40 Congress MLAs in the 68-member assembly as well as three independents who support the ruling party.
Asked why the BJP sounded so confident about the Rajya Sabha poll, Singhvi said, “There is an old saying called Dutch courage which means when the actual event occurs there is no courage.”
The senior Congress man, and a leading lawyer, who represents several opposition stalwarts in key cases, is facing a tough contest before Mahajan, who had crossed over to the BJP in 2022.
“The BJP leaders are the ones saying that they will get 10 persons to destroy their vote. The very comment sounds so hollow and despicable,” Singhvi said, adding that nine votes of Congress MLAs would have to be destroyed for him to lose the election.
Importantly, Congress own Himachal Pradesh strongman Anand Sharma is said to be upset and in touch with loyalist MLAs about the nomination, which some party leaders have questioned as a break of tradition.
Some Congress leaders have said Singhvi is an outsider to Himachal and the Congress has never nominated a non-Himachali to Rajya Sabha from the state. They reject the argument that late Patiala royal Mohinder Kaur, a Congress nominee from Himachal to the Rajya Sabha in 1978, was a non Himachali and say she owned properties across areas that stand in modern-day state.
The Tribune has further learnt that senior Himachal Congress leaders Rajinder Singh Rana and Sudhir Sharma, both formidable forces in their areas — Hamirpur and Kangra — are upset at being denied ministerial berths in the state. Rana rose to fame after defeating ex-CM Prem Kumar Dhumal in 2017. Sharma was a close aide and ex-minister in the late Virbhadra Singh government.
BJP Rajya Sabha nominee Harsh Mahajan is learnt to have ties across parties, with suspense around the February 27 election only growing.
Singhvi rebutted the outsider argument saying the law dispensing with the requirement of a candidate to be a resident of a particular state to get elected to Rajya Sabha from that state was done away with in 2003, when the NDA government was in power.
Later the apex court upheld its validity. Former PM Manmohan Singh was Rajya Sabha MP from Assam for decades and later from Rajasthan.
