Carved out of Jaswan-Pragpur in 2012, Congress wins Dehra seat for first time

Lalit Mohan

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Dharamsala, July 14

The Congress won the Dehra Assembly seat for the first time since it was carved out of Jaswan-Pragpur in the delimitation of the Assembly constituencies in the state in 2012. The party’s gamble of fielding Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur from the Dehra Assembly constituency paid off. The Congress managed to build its campaign in Dehra as an opportunity for voters of the constituency to get their share in power by voting for the Chief Minister’s wife.

Sukhu termed Dehra as his own constituency and made a slew of promises like setting up the offices of the Superintendent of Police and Superintending Engineer, PWD, in Dehra. If the SP office is established in Dehra, it will become a police district in Kangra.

BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh, who had won the seat twice as an Independent candidate, lost the bypoll. Kamlesh successfully countered the BJP’s campaign of presenting Hoshiyar Singh as a local candidate. She portrayed herself as ‘Dehra ki Beti’, as her paternal Nalsuha village falls in the Dehra constituency. Her genial and calm behaviour won the the hearts of even hardcore BJP workers.

Singh also faced the challenge of taking along the BJP cadre of Dehra Assembly constituency who had been at loggerheads with him as the independent candidate. Many BJP leaders from Dehra, including the former minister and BJP MLA Ramesh Dhawala, did not join Singh’s election campaign despite his efforts to placate him. Dhawala openly said the party high command had not taken him into confidence before announcing Singh as a party candidate from Dehra. He gave a message to the party cadre to vote according to their conscience.

The fact that there was a division in the BJP in Dehra was obvious from the fact that the party had deputed its leaders from the Kangra parliamentary constituency to manage Hoshiyar Singh’s campaign. Dehra, though a part of Kangra district, was part of the Hamirpur parliamentary constituency represented by MP Anurag Thakur. Interestingly, in the recent Lok Sabha poll, the BJP had got a lead of about 19,000 votes from the Dehra constituency.