TNR Desk
Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha elections and Assembly byelections to six seats in Himachal Pradesh are likely to be announced late Saturday (April 13, 2024) evening. A meeting of the Congress central election committee is to be held in New Delhi today under the chairmanship of party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge at 4 pm.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu left from Hamirpur for Delhi on Saturday morning to attend the meeting. Congress state president Pratibha Singh reached Chandigarh from Shimla on Friday itself and travelled to Delhi on Saturday morning.
Sources said the names of Vivek Sharma from Kutlehar and Devender Singh Jaggi from Dharamshala appear to be almost final while there is still a dilemma regarding the Sujanpur seat. The names of two to three probable candidates from Gagret, Lahaul-Spiti and Barsar are on the panel.
The Congress screening committee has met on Wednesday and brainstormed on the names received from the Block Congress Committees and in the survey report. Party sources said that in the recent meeting of the coordination committee and screening committee held in Delhi, along with finalising the names of the Lok Sabha candidates, the candidates for the Assembly byelections were also discussed.
Former MLA Manjit Singh Dogra is a potential candidate from Barsar. The names of Gyan Chand and Sanjeev Sharma are also on the panel. From Gagret, Rakesh Kalia is the frontrunner while the names of former state president Kuldeep Kumar and Raman Jaswal are also being discussed. The names of Kangra Cooperative Bank chairman Kuldeep Pathania, Naresh Thakur and Ravindra Verma are on the panel for the Sujanpur seat.
In Lahaul-Spiti, consensus is said to be lacking on the candidature of former BJP minister Ramlal Markanda. The Block Congress Committee has opposed giving the Congress ticket to a BJP leader. Several delegations of Congress leaders from Lahaul-Spiti also met the Chief Minister recently and registered their protest. Local leaders have proposed making a leader associated with the Congress the candidate. In such a situation, the names of former MLA from Lahaul-Spiti Raghuveer Singh, zila parishad member Anuradha Rana and youth leader Dorje Larje are being discussed.
