ST candidate’s win stirs controversy

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, April 13

The election of Onkar Nehria, who belongs to the Gaddi or ST community, as the Mayor of the Dharamsala Municipal Corporation, has created another controversy.

Sudhir Sharma, former minister and AICC secretary, said the government had reserved the posts of Mayor for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes candidates in Palampur, Mandi and Solan. But the post in Dharamsala was open for the general category. However, the government decided to appoint ST candidates on the posts of Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

The BJP has a lot of women councillors of the general category, who could have been elected for the mayoral post.

However, by giving all mayoral posts in four MCs, the present BJP government had done injustice to the general category candidates in the state, Sharma said.

Meanwhile, BJP leader and HPCA director Sanjay Sharma, who had recently demanded that the post of Dharamsala Mayor be given to a candidate of the Brahmin community, also expressed his displeasure over the election of both the ST candidates.

He said there was disenchantment among the general category population that form a majority in Dharamsala as well as Kangra districts. Meanwhile, there was rumbling in the Congress after the party candidates did not contest the election for the Mayor’s post. A senior Congress leader from Dharamsala alleged that some party councillors were hand in glove with the BJP.

In the last House of the Dharamsala MC, the BJP had just three councillors but still contested the election for the Mayor’s post. Later despite the Congress majority, Onkar Nehria, a BJP councillor, was allowed to be the Deputy Mayor. Now they had not contested the election for the Mayor, the leader added. When asked about the probability of a few Congress leaders being hand in glove with the BJP, former Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee president Sukhwinder Sukhu refuted the allegations. He said the Congress councillors did not contest the election for the Mayor’s post due to a strategy.

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