Bypoll: Congress ticket aspirant starts campaigning in Dehra

Dharamsala, June 9

With Congress winning four out of six byelections held in Himachal along with the Lok Sabha elections, the race of Congress ticket for Dehra Assembly bypoll has begun. The aspirants for Congress ticket have already started their political activities.

Rajesh Sharma, who unsuccessfully contested Assembly poll from Dehra in 2022 on Congress ticket, has already started campaigning in the Assembly segment. He has started organising political meeting. When contacted, Rajesh Sharma said that he was hopeful of getting the ticket from Dehra and so has started his election campaign. “After I contested from Dehra in 2022 Assembly elections, I purchased a house here and have been consistently working in the area,” he said.

Sharma was, however, facing opposition from supporters of senior Congress leader and former Rajya Sabha member, Viplove Thakur, who at one time used to contest from Dehra Assembly seat. Viplove in a statement issued recently said that the ticket from Dehra assembly segment should be given to some local candidate. Viplove is considered close to Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and will lobby for party ticket for her loyalist.

Amidst all this, the HPCC today abolished the organisational district body of Dehra ahead of the Assembly bypoll.

Rajesh Sharma had lost the Dehra Assembly poll to Hoshiar Singh, an independent candidate. Hoshiar Singh won from Dehra assembly segment twice in 2017 and 2022. He, however, resigned as an independent MLA and joined the BJP just before the Lok Sabha elections. He had resigned as an independent MLA with an expectation that his Assembly byelection would also be held along with the Lok Sabha electoions.

However, Speaker of Himachal Vidhan Sabha accepted the resignation of three independent MLAs after the Lok Sabha elections. This has left the independent MLAs with a difficult task of contesting bypoll with Congress government firmly in power in the state.

Though the BJP led from Dehra Assembly in 2024 Lok Sabha poll by a margin of over 10,000 votes, the party is wary of tendency of people to vote in byelections. The people of Himachal have already shown a tendency that they vote differently in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.