Congress screening panel meets, no consensus on 29 Himachal seats

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, October 7

The Himachal Congress Screening Committee held an elaborate meeting lasting nearly five hours on Friday, with sticky seats being at the centre of the discussions.

In all, the Congress is yet to reach a consensus on 29 seats. The party’s central election committee chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi had in the first meeting held recently cleared 39 candidates, including all 20 sitting MLAs.

There are many sticky seats among the pending ones. To start with, a section of senior Himachal Congress leaders continues to demand that HPCC chief Pratibha Singh should take on Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur in Mandi’s Seraj segment.

Sources said the matter came up at the screening panel meeting today, with the CEC expected to take a call. Screening committee chairperson Deepa Dasmunshi favours Pratibha Singh to take on the Chief Minister.

Another pending seat is Dharamsala, which former minister and late Virbhadra Singh loyalist Sudhir Sharma is coveting. AICC sources, however, said the daughter-in-law of former Union minister Chandresh Kumari is also a serious contender here.

Sudhir Sharma had not contested the 2019 Dharamsala bypoll necessitated after then MLA Kishan Kapoor went on to win the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Kangra with a margin of over 4.77 lakh votes, among the highest in India.

Shahpur is another contentious seat where Pratibha Singh is learnt to be pushing Kewal Singh Pathania as a candidate. Pathania had lost the previous two elections he contested. Major Vijay Singh Mankotia had once won the seat on the Congress ticket.

State leaders are cut up with the push for Pathania who had come third in the 2017 state election, ending up behind even an Independent candidate.

In Bharmour, the slugfest for the ticket is between former minister Thakur Singh Bharmauri and Himachal Youth Congress leader Surjit Bharmauri. Thakur Singh had lost the seat in the 2017 state poll.

Importantly, the Indian Youth Congress had sent five names for consideration. None has so far managed to get their candidatures cleared. These include — Nigam Bhandari who lost the Kinnaur seat to sitting MLA JS Negi after the party decided to repeat all lawmakers; Surjit Bharmauri from Bharmour; Pankaj Kumar from Shahpur; Vivek from Jandauta and Yadupati Thakur from Sarkaghat.

Among other pending seats where discussions for candidatures are underway are Chaupal, Jaisinghpur, Sulha, Indora and Dharampur.