Back To The Wall

Corruption charges, anti-incumbency, leadership challenges... Virbhadra Singh has a tough election year.

- Asit Jolly

He looks apprehensive. Receiving visitors at the Himachal Pradesh civil secretariat in Shimla on May 27, 82-year-old Virbhadra Singh admitted he was anxious. “Any matter in court is a cause for worry,” the chief minister told india today, alluding to the investigations against him by the income tax department, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) (see box: Hot on his Heels).

Two days later, a special court in Delhi granted Singh and his wife Pratibha bail in the disproportionate assets case committed to trial by the CBI, but he knows it is far from being over. Grilled by ED investigators for nine straight hours on April 20 on related charges of money-laundering, Singh is aware his arrest and incarceration remain a real and present threat. All this ahead of legislative assembly elections—expected in October—complicates things for Singh and the ruling Congress in a state that has never repeated a government since 1977.

And confident of a comeback in Himachal Pradesh in the wake of resounding wins in neighbouring Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is pulling out all the stops. On April 27, the state BJP hosted Narendra Modi with unprecedented celebration in Shimla. The route of the prime minister’s cavalcade was strewn with rose petals as supporters braved unexpected showers to hear him address a rally on Shimla’s Ridge. Officially there to launch UDAN, the Union government’s regional air connectivity scheme, Modi exhorted his cheering audience to “oust the corrupt and the dishonest” from power.