Nagender Singh
Shimla, September 6
To address the simmering dissent within the Congress Party in Himachal Pradesh, the state election committee has given its consent to about 40 candidates of the total 68 assembly constituencies in a meeting held in New Delhi. In a wise move to dispel the ticket-phobia from the minds of the claimants, the party has given go-ahead signal to the 20 sitting MLAs, three AICC secretaries besides single claimant seat candidates or senior established leaders, said a source in the Congress Party.
“Jagat Negi, a senior Congress leader from Kinnuar who roars in the Himachal Pradesh assembly, gets ticket to contest from this tribal seat and Nand Lal wins his claim on Rampur constituency,” said a Congress insider.
About 18-days ago two sitting Congress MLAs- Pawan Kajal from Kangra and Lukhvinder Rana from Nalagarh defected to the ruling BJP probably for fear of not getting a ticket.
Himachal Pradesh is nowadays abuzz with political activities before the assembly election scheduled to be held in November.
This meeting of the Congress’s state election committee, largely attended by all its members, was presided over by the president Pratibha Singh. The senior Congress leader Anand Sharma who had resigned from the body a few weeks ago, was also
present in the meeting.
Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Mukesh Agnihotri and chairman of state campaign committee Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu did play a role in choosing these candidates.
A total of 1347 aspirants had applied for Congress tickets for the assembly polls.
According to a senior party leader many factors including caste and region played role for ‘selection for the election’ process on many seats.Senior leaders did lobby for their supporters to be fielded in the elections but there was consensus on majority seats, barring some in Kangra and Mandi districts.
More than half of seats were decided with consensus on giving ticket to all 20 sitting legislators and three AICC secretaries -Sudhir Sharma from Dharamsala, Rajesh Dharmani from Ghumarwin and Raghubir Bali from Nagrota in Kangra district.
There were constituencies where single names were approved from Assembly segments because of senior established leaders like Kaul Singh Thakur (Drang in Mandi), Kuldeep Pathania (Bhattiyat in Chamba), Ajay Mahajan (Nurpur in Kangra), Kuldeep Kumar (Chintpurni in Una), Chander Kumar (Jawali), Vinod Sultanpuri (Kasauli in Solan), Ram Kumar (Doon in Solan) and Ajay Solanki (Nahan in Sirmour).
To sort out a winning candidate from a long list of 10 names in Shimla Urban constituency, a panel was set up . In about 25 segments, a panel consisting of two to four shortlisted names has been formed so that the Central Election Committee can take the final call on allotment of the party ticket. The destiny of the ticket aspirants from Theog, Chopal in Shimla district and Pachhad in Sirmour district will be decided by a panel who will examine the candidacy of all the ticket claimants.
