Assembly by-poll: Why BJP's 'Operation Lotus' may wilt in Himachal

It is not often that by-polls dominate the electoral discourse of a Lok Sabha election but then the by-elections happening today (June 1) for six assembly constituencies of Himachal Pradesh, which are simultaneously voting to elect its four Lok Sabha MPs, aren’t ordinary either.

For, the outcome of the assembly by-polls would determine whether the Congress’s only state government north of the Vindhyas remains in office or falls within 18 months of assuming power.

Congress rebels

The by-polls for the Dharamsala, Sujanpur, Kutlehar, Barsar, Gagret and Lahaul & Spiti assembly segments were necessitated after their then Congress MLAs were disqualified from the Assembly in February for defying the party whip.

A day earlier, these MLAs – Sudhir Sharma (Dharamsala), Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Inderdutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), Davinder Bhutto (Kutlehar), Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret) and Ravi Thakur (Lahaul & Spiti) – had cross-voted in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Vardhan leading to the shock defeat of Congress nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha polls.

Subsequently, the six rebels shuttled between resorts in BJP-ruled Haryana’s Panchkula and Uttarakhand’s Rishikesh for weeks before formally joining the BJP, which later fielded them as its candidates from their respective constituencies once the by-polls were announced.

It's different here

Bulk defections of Congress MLAs to the BJP and the saffron party’s attempts (often successful) at toppling of Congress-led state governments may not shock the common voter elsewhere in the country.

In fact, if similar past episodes in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh are anything to go by, such unethical politics has even been condoned by the electorate that has invariably re-elected most turncoats in by-polls.

In Himachal Pradesh, however, the political turbulence caused by the defections has generated palpable public sympathy for Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu and his Congress government. And, it is this public sympathy that the Congress is now tapping into with its slogan, 'Janta karegi nyay' ('The public will do justice'), as it strives to retain the six assembly segments seeing by-polls along with Lok Sabha elections.

Political lightweights

The Congress has fielded Ranjit Singh (Sujanpur), Devinder Singh Jaggi (Dharamsala), Vivek Sharma (Kutlehar), Subhash Chand (Barsar), Anuradha Rana (Lahaul & Spiti) and Rakesh Kalia (Gagret) as its candidates. With the exception of Ranjit Singh and Kalia, a former MLA, the other four Congress candidates are considered political lightweights compared to their BJP rivals.

Yet, the voters’ visible, at times even violent, resentment against the turncoats has given the Congress confidence of winning at least four, if not all, six assembly segments.

Following the disqualification of the six MLAs, the Congress currently has 34 MLAs in the Himachal assembly. To retain a simple majority in the 68-member assembly, the Congress needs to win just one by-poll but it knows that such a slender lead would make it susceptible to possible instability in the future.

As such, Sukhu is leading an aggressive campaign to maximise the Congress’s wins in the by-elections and a recurring theme of his campaign is that the public must “teach a lesson to those who sold their souls for power”.

Congress wave?

That the Congress by-poll campaign has struck a chord with the voters isn’t difficult to gauge. “Himachal has never witnessed such things; the people are not liking it,” Dharamsala resident Umesh Kamotra, who runs an electric appliances shop in McLeodganj, told The Federal. He would “vote for the Congress candidate”, he added.

Tenzin Dhondup, who runs a bakery in McLeodganj, too asserted, “Everyone here will vote for the Congress”.

BJP candidate Sudhir Sharma has been facing the people’s wrath across the constituency. Earlier this month, he was chased away by angry locals during while canvassing in Dharamsala town while some unidentified miscreants had also pulled down his hoardings and posters in various parts of the constituency.

Dharamsala residents say Sharma, a three-term term MLA whose father, Pandit Sant Ram, was known to be a staunch Congressman and had served as minister in the state, has not only “cheated the voters” by defecting to the BJP but also “sullied the legacy of his father”. “I don’t know what will happen in the other assembly seats but in Dharamsala, Sharma will definitely lose,” said Rajiv Kumar, another Dharamsala resident.

Surprise competition

For Sharma, who faces the Congress’s Devinder Jaggi, a former Dharamsala mayor, retaining the seat has been made more difficult by the entry of BJP rebel Rakesh Chaudhary as an independent candidate in the by-poll fray. Chaudhary, an OBC leader, was Sharma’s BJP rival in the 2022 assembly polls when the latter won Dharamsala with a narrow margin of just win 3285 votes on a Congress ticket.

If Sharma is facing a triangular contest against a Congress candidate and a BJP rebel in Dharamsala, BJP’s Rajinder Rana is caught in a fierce but direct poll battle against his 2022 assembly poll rival Ranjit Singh in Sujanpur.

Ranjit had lost the Sujanpur seat by a meagre margin of 399 votes to Rana in 2022. When the BJP fielded Rana for the bypolls, Ranjit swiftly moved to the Congress and secured a ticket from the seat.

Rana’s claim to fame had been that he had defeated former Himachal CM and BJP stalwart Prem Kumar Dhumal from Sujanpur in the 2017 assembly polls. Prior to that shocking victory, Rana had been a BJP leader and one of Dhumal’s closest confidantes. While Rana’s defection to the BJP may seem like a ghar wapsi of sorts, the voters in Sujanpur now see him as an “untrustworthy” and “power hungry” leader.

Trust deficit

“How do we trust him now?” a BJP worker from Sujanpur told The Federal on condition of anonymity. The BJP worker said Rana’s return to the BJP had created a perplexing situation for the party’s workers, most of whom remain loyal to Dhumal even today, since the Sujanpur assembly segment falls in the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency, the electoral turf of Dhumal’s son and Union minister Anurag Thakur.

“He (Rana) betrayed Dhumal and joined the Congress and when he did not get a ministry in the Sukhu government, he returned to the BJP. How does he expect Dhumal’s real supporters to help him in the election?

"What is the guarantee that he will stay loyal to the BJP in the future; can he be loyal to Anurag when he wasn’t even loyal to Dhumal... Ranjit Singh is a good leader and he worked hard for the BJP and almost defeated Rana in 2022 but now because of Rana he has quit the party and is fighting on a Congress ticket; he (Ranjit) will win because the people, even from BJP, are with him,” the BJP worker added.

Clear distinction

Similar proclamations of anger over “betrayal” and “cheating the voters” can be heard across the Barsar and Kutlehar assembly constituencies, which are also part of the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat.

Interestingly, people in Barsar, Kutlehar and Sujanpur appear to have made a clear distinction between the Lok Sabha and the assembly candidates, making it known that while they want the BJP’s Thakur to win the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat, there vote would go to the Congress in the assembly by-polls.

“The Sukhu government has been doing good work and these people (the turncoats) betrayed the people’s mandate. We had voted for them because we wanted a Congress government in the state; we liked their poll promises... Anurag Thakur is a big leader now and he will become a minister again if the BJP wins; so people will vote for Thakur in the Lok Sabha but for Congress candidates in the assembly (by-polls),” said Vishal Kumar, who works at a petrol pump in Kutlehar.

Sukhu's broadside

The six assembly segments facing by-polls are scattered across three of the state’s four Lok Sabha seats. This has also allowed Sukhu to launch his broadside against the BJP for both these elections from the assembly constituencies where by-polls are being held.

Over the past two months, he has visited the six assembly segments multiple times, constantly reminding the people of his humble background of an “ordinary party worker” who rose to become the state’s CM “because of your blessings” and who “these traitors want to remove from office”.

With his government delivering on the Congress’s poll promise of restoring the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) for government employees in the state and starting the process for disbursing Rs 1,500 monthly financial aid to women, Sukhu has been urging voters to “teach a lesson” to the turncoats so that “our pro-people government completes its full term”.

Whether Sukhu’s pleas get answered by the electorate, helping him and the Congress retain their only government in the country’s north will be known on June 4.