SUKHU LEADS A DESPERATE FIGHTBACK

RIDING ON TWO CONSECUTIVE CLEAN SWEEPS, THE BJP RELIES ON MODI MAGIC IN HIMACHAL. A FRACTIOUS CONGRESS, LED BY ITS BELEAGURED CM, TAKES HEART FROM ITS 2022 ASSEMBLY POLLS WIN

- ANILESH S. MAHAJAN

THIS SPRING, AS THE SNOW STARTED MELTING in the middle Himalayas, the political temperature in Himachal Pradesh, as if on cue, kept rising. It started with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s stunning capture of a Rajya Sabha seat for Harsh Mahajan—a former close aide of former Congress CM Virbhadra Singh—with the help of disgruntled Congress MLAs on February 27. It set the stage for a charged campaign for the Lok Sabha polls in the only northern state ruled by the Congress.

Though the incipient rebellion against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu was patched up through troubleshooting by veteran Congress leaders, enabling the CM to cling on, the embarrassing episode has shaken party morale. Himachal Pradesh sends four MPs to the Lok Sabha. The Congress is defending the Mandi seat, which state unit chief Pratibha Singh, widow of Virbhadra, won in the bypolls in November 2021. Otherwise, the BJP has dominated Lok Sabha polls in the state, scoring 4-0 clean sweeps in 2014 and 2019. Riding on a high-pitched Hindutva narrative, it increased its vote share by 16 percentage points in 2019, scoring a stunning 70 per cent.

However, in the assembly polls of December 2022, the Congress managed to get the better of the BJP challenge led by then incumbent CM Jai Ram Thakur, capturing 40 seats in the 68-member legislative assembly. The Congress fought as a cohesive unit and circumvented the Hindu nationalism agenda of the BJP by highlighting governance issues.