Munish Sood
Mandi
Factionalism within the Himachal Pradesh Congress has once again come to the fore, this time over the appointment of the party’s new district president in Kinnaur, exposing fresh cracks within the ruling party.
The Congress high command recently appointed Nigam Bhandari as president of the Kinnaur District Congress Committee. However, the decision has triggered an open rebellion from Revenue Minister and Kinnaur MLA Jagat Singh Negi, who has publicly questioned both the appointment and the manner in which it was made.
Launching a sharp attack on his own party, Negi said the concerns he had been raising for long were now being vindicated by statements coming even from BJP leaders.
“I worked for the Congress when people in Kinnaur would not even hold the party flag. My father laid the foundation of the Congress in the district, but today people who stood against the Congress ideology are being entrusted with its leadership,” Negi said.
He said handing over organisational responsibility to those who have repeatedly lost elections amounted to “the defeat of the Congress ideology.”
Negi expressed disappointment that despite being the elected representative from Kinnaur and a senior Cabinet minister, he was not consulted before the appointment was finalised.
“Had my opinion been sought, this would not have happened,” he said, warning that such decisions could politically damage the Congress in the district.
In one of his strongest attacks yet on the party’s internal functioning, Negi alleged that “sleeper cells” had become active within the Congress.
“There are sleeper cells working inside the Congress. They are functioning like the BJP’s B-Team and could prove disastrous for the party. The statements now coming from BJP leaders only strengthen what I have been saying,” he alleged.
The remarks are significant as they come from a senior minister in the Congress government and point to deepening organisational divisions within the party.
Negi also launched a blistering attack on the BJP over its observance of ‘Kala Diwas’ to mark the Emergency, accusing the party of imposing an “undeclared Emergency” in the country.
He alleged that central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were being used to target political opponents and claimed several people had been jailed without credible evidence.
Calling for the Emergency to be viewed in its historical context, Negi argued that the then democratically elected government was facing attempts to be destabilised through unconstitutional means and alleged that efforts had been made to provoke the armed forces and paramilitary personnel against the government.
He further accused the BJP of misleading the public by selectively interpreting history for political purposes.
The controversy assumes added political significance as Nigam Bhandari, a former Youth Congress president, is widely known to share a long-standing political rivalry with Jagat Singh Negi. With the Cabinet minister openly questioning the party’s organisational decisions, the latest episode has once again brought the Congress’s internal fault lines in Himachal Pradesh into sharp public focus, posing an avoidable political challenge for the ruling party.
