Show of strength in hot seat Dharamshala tomorrow as Cong, BJP candidates to file nomination
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The Dharamshala Assembly constituency, being viewed as a hot seat for the June 1 bypoll, is set for a show of strength on Tuesday (May 14, 2024) as both Congress and BJP candidates will be filing their nomination papers.
Dharamshala is one of the six Assembly seats of Himachal Pradesh where byelections are scheduled on June 1. The elections have been necessitated after the disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs on February 29 (2024) for defying a party whip on voting on the passage of the budget in the Assembly.
Before this, the six MLAs had cross-voted for the BJP in the February 27 election to the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Himachal, leading to Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s defeat at the hands of BJP’s Harsh Mahajan.
The defeat had caused much embarrassment to Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, who had accused then party MLA from Dharamshala Sudhir Sharma of being the kingpin of the conspiracy.
Sudhir has since joined the BJP along with the five other disqualified Congress MLAs and all the six turncoats have been fielded by the saffron party from their respective constituencies. Sukhu has accused the six rebels of taking crore of rupees from the BJP to topple the Congress government, an allegation denied by the former MLAs.
Chief Minister Sukhu and Sudhir have, thus, made the election a prestige battle and both would be criss-crossing each other on Tuesday when nominations are filed. Sukhu and other top Congress leaders will be visiting Dharamshala to attend the nomination process of Congress candidate Devendra Jaggi, who is a former Dharamshala Mayor.
The BJP too is expected to put up a star-studded show with Union Minister Anurag Thakur, BJP state president Rajeev Bindal and Leader of Opposition Jai Ram Thakur among those expected to remain present. The BJP has named its programme as “Swabhiman Diwas”.
BJP rebel Rakesh Chaudhary too is in the fray and he filed his nomination on May 10 as an Independent candidate. He had contested the last Assembly elections on the BJP ticket and lost to Sudhir by 3,285 votes.
