Probably for the first time in the history of Himachal Pradesh, the not-so-forward Dehra Assembly constituency in Kangra district will be hosting the state-level Independence Day function on August 15.
Dehra is the home constituency of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur, who won the byelection from the seat recently as the Congress candidate, defeating BJP nominee and two-term former Independent MLA Hoshyar Singh.
As Kamlesh was fighting her maiden election, which turned into a battle of prestige, Chief Minister Sukhu had promised the star and moons to the voters. The state-level Independence Day function seems to be a step towards that direction.
With more than three-year tenure of the ruling Congress still remaining in Himachal Pradesh and the government having announced big-ticket projects for Dehra, the constituency’s intelligent voters on July 10, 2024, elected Kamlesh as their MLA.
Hoshyar Singh, who had resigned from the Vidhan Sabha recently and was seeking re-election on the BJP ticket, was shown the door.
Dehra, a predominantly backward portion of Kangra district, has always been a BJP bastion and it’s after around 25 years that a Congress candidate won from here.
In her campaign, Kamlesh had repeatedly mentioned in Pahari dialect ‘main tusan di dhiyan’ (I am your daughter). He has won the Dehra seat with more than nine thousand votes.
Kamlesh defeated Hoshyar Singh by 9,399 votes. She was lagging behind in the first four rounds of counting, but after that she took the lead. She got 32,737 votes while BJP’s Hoshyar got 23,338 votes.
The security deposit of three other independent candidates— Sulekha Chaudhary (167 votes), Advocate Sanjay Sharma (43 votes) and Arun Ankesh Syal (65 votes) was forfeited.
It was Kamlesh’s debut Assembly election, the polling having been conducted on July 10 and the counting of votes done on July 13. The bypoll result was seen as a referendum on the performance of her husband’s 18-month-old Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led Congress government.
Kamlesh belongs to Dehra constituency in Kangra district and is married in neighbouring Nadaun, the seat represented in the Assembly by the first-term Chief Minister Sukhu. All eyes, thus, were on the crucial Assembly bypoll in Dehra.
