Lead of 52K in Solan won Kashyap the Shimla seat

Ambika Sharma

Solan, June 4

Solan district yet again played a decisive role for the Shimla Lok Sabha seat, where BJP candidate Suresh Kashyap secured the highest lead of 52,106 votes to romp home with a comfortable winning margin. He won the seat by a margin of 90,548 votes.

The Congress Lok Sabha candidate and sitting MLA from Kasauli, however, could not even secure a lead in his home turf, where the BJP polled 3,360 votes.

Though Kasauli had registered the second highest voting percentage of 76.14 per cent among the 17 Assembly segments of Shimla Lok Sabha seat, it failed to work in favour of its sitting MLA.

Shimla Lok Sabha comprises three districts of Solan, Sirmaur and Shimla districts.

Sultanpuri trailed in all rounds as he could not secure any lead and could barely poll 24,277 votes against 27,737 secured by BJP’s sitting MP Suresh Kashyap. Though Kasauli proved to be the least productive to the BJP among five Assembly segments of Solan district, it did not help the Congress secure a lead.

The performance of its two Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPSs) — Sanjay Awasthi from Arki and Ramkumar Chawdhary from Doon — was even more appalling. While the BJP secured a lead of 15,484 from Arki, it managed a comfortable lead of 13,082 in Doon.

The Solan seat is held by the senior-most cabinet minister, DR Shandil, but the Congress trailed here too by 5,016 votes.

In the Nalagarh seat held by Independent MLA KL Thakur, who was a BJP rebel, the Congress trailed by 15,164 votes. Due to the lack of cohesive campaigning, the Congress failed to rejuvenate its cadres and the fact that it faced shortage of even polling agents at several booths spoke volumes of the half-baked approach of the party towards campaigning.

The party failed to set up proper booths in Kasauli, the home turf of its candidate. Banners placed over a parked car served as the party’s booth near Sanawar polling station. There was no door to door campaigning as voters failed to be contacted by the party functionaries.

As against a rally of BJP national president JP Nadda at Kunihar, the Congress held a road show of its national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi in Solan. However, it failed to rejuvenate the party cadre, which could not muster a lead anywhere in the district. The Congress has four of the five MLAs from Solan district, which comprise the senior most cabinet minister and two CPSs.