BJP faces heat from dissidents in Himachal

This year BJP denied tickets to 11 legislators and faced a revolt from as many as 23 rebels over seat allotment

On Saturday, the last day of withdrawal of nominations for Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP faced stiff resistance from some rebels while it managed to pacify a few.

This year the party has denied tickets to 11 legislators and faced a revolt from as many as 23 rebels over seat allotment.

Prominent among these were Nalagarh MLA Lakhvinder Singh Rana, who lost his seat to K L Thakur and Shimla MLA Suresh Bharadwaj, whose seat was given to Sanjay Sood.

Bharadwaj has been fielded from Kasumpti where Congress’s Anirudh Singh has won three times in a row. Apart from that, in party president J P Nadda’s region Bilaspur, sitting MLA Subhash Thakur lost his seat to Ajay Jamwal, who is seen close to the president.

To pacify rebels, the party has sent Nadda to Shimla. Earlier this week, he met Kullu leader Maheshwar Singh and managed to pacify him.

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The party also managed to ensure that Mangal Pandey does not cause an upset in the Nagrota seat, and leaders said that Vinay Newaria has also taken back his nomination from the Kullu seat.

In Shimla, on the sidelines of a press conference, union minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said that the anger of the rebels will be managed by the party. “They are part of the BJP family, and in due course of time, we will win them over,” Thakur said.

In the Dharamsala seat, the party had fielded Rakesh Chaudhary, who had joined the Aam Aadmi Party earlier and had come back to the BJP.

Party leaders told DH that by Saturday afternoon, as many as 11 rebels had withdrawn their nominations.

A state leader said Union Home Minister Amit Shah will hold a rally at Kasumpti on November 1, and the move is aimed at helping Bharadwaj.

“There were about 23 rebels when the names were announced. We got 9 of them to withdraw earlier, and three in the past two days,” said a leader.

Forest minister Rakesh Pathania was among the state ministers who lost the sitting seat. He was shifted from Nurpur to Fatehpur. He is bound to face resistance from former Rajya Sabha Kirpal Parmar and former BJP leader Rajan Sushant who joined the AAP.

Prof Ramesh K Chauhan, a political analyst, said the dissent has made things interesting.

“It is important to note that the Himachal voter’s intelligent voting pattern has managed to ensure that the leaders can afford no complacency,” Chauhan told DH.