Move over, Mandi, Himachal's real contest is in Shimla and Kangra

Till a few months ago, most pollsters believed that Himachal Pradesh, which in the last two general elections had seen all four of its constituencies going into the BJP’s kitty, was set for an encore this election season. The notion was further strengthened in February when the state’s Congress government, within a year of assuming office, came to the brink of collapse following the rebellion of six party MLAs who were promptly disqualified from the Assembly.

As the hill state prepares to vote on June 1, the electoral landscape of Himachal today has changed almost unrecognisably from what it was when those projections of the Congress’ doom were made earlier this year. The Congress’ campaign appears to have rapidly gained momentum over the past two weeks, making the BJP jittery.

What is most intriguing, perhaps, is that this turnaround isn’t just visible in the Mandi constituency, where the Congress fielded Vikramaditya Singh, a minister in the state’s Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu government and son of former six-term CM Virbhadra Singh, against BJP candidate and actor Kangna Ranaut.

Turnaround in Mandi

The BJP had announced Ranaut’s candidature at a time when Singh’s mother and incumbent Mandi MP Pratibha Singh had refused to contest the upcoming polls. With Pratibha bowing out of the race and the Congress struggling to set its house in order following the turbulence of February, many believed Ranaut would be an easy winner from Mandi. Vikramaditya’s entry into the poll fray coupled with visible discomfiture among the public at Ranaut’s “undignified” poll rhetoric has, however, evened the odds between the Congress and the BJP in the Mandi seat.

The real surprise, though, is playing out in the Shimla and Kangra Lok Sabha seats where the Congress appears to be benefitting from the voters’ anger against the BJP on issues such as crippling unemployment, rising food prices and the resentment among the youth over the Centre’s Agniveer scheme.

The Centre’s failure to provide financial relief to Himachal when it was ravaged by floods last July and the continuing disaffection among apple farmers and horticulturists with the “pro-Adani” policies of the state’s previous BJP government have also stunted the BJP’s victory prospects.

Anger palpable

That Himachal’s voters aren’t happy with the BJP’s alleged attempt at toppling Sukhu’s government is also palpable across the state making the saffron party’s already difficult bid of retaining the four Lok Sabha seats even tougher. With Sukhu leading the charge, the Congress, has run an uncharacteristically cogent and aggressive campaign that rides on the state government’s delivery on poll promises of Rs 1500 monthly cash grants for women and reinstatement of the Old Pension Scheme for government employees.

“Six months back, it looked like all four seats will be won by the BJP again but now it looks like the result will be 2-2 or even 3-1 in the Congress’s favour. The only constituency where the BJP is safe is Hamirpur (where Union minister Anurag Thakur is pitted against the Congress’s Satpal Raizada). Price rise and unemployment have become big issues. The BJP had two major vote banks which helped it win – the youth and women – but both are not with it now; the youth because of Agniveer and women because Congress is giving Rs 1500 monthly financial assistance,” says Krishan Kumar, a former Pradhan of Darati village, which falls in the Palampur district of Kangra Lok Sabha constituency.

Krishan feels Congress candidate Anand Sharma, who is fighting his first Lok Sabha election in a political career spanning nearly five decades, has a better chance of winning the seat than his BJP rival, Rajeev Bhardwaj. “Bada naam hai, log unko policy maker ke roop mei dekhte hain (Anand Sharma is a big leader, people see him as a policy maker),” Krishan said while claiming Bhardwaj is a “lightweight” who has to also fight the anti-incumbency against his predecessor Kishan Kapoor.

Agniveer backfires

Kapoor had won the Kangra seat, a traditional BJP stronghold, in 2019 taking over from party stalwart Shanta Kumar but largely remained an “absentee MP” for the past five years, in part due to his poor health. “Kishan Kapoor did not do anything for Kangra after winning in 2019. He didn’t even visit the constituency; now BJP wants people to vote for Bhardwaj only because he is (Narendra) Modi’s candidate but the voters want someone who they can hold accountable. Anand Sharma may not have won elections earlier but he is a seasoned leader, people will vote for him,” says Manu Dogra, a resident of Pathiar village in Kangra’s Nagrota assembly segment.

Though local BJP leaders claim that the party will retain Kangra, they too are forced to admit that there is public anger on issues like the Agniveer scheme and the non-performance of the incumbent party MP. “There is some anger but we have been explaining our side to the voters... Kishan Kapoor has not been keeping well, he was even hospitalised for a long period and that is why the party has not fielded him this time. As far as Agniveer is concerned, we are telling the youth that it is not a bad scheme; at least they will get Rs 10-12 lakh when they leave the Army after four years and then they can be absorbed into other government jobs too,” Sanjay Kumar, local BJP leader and Pradhan of Hanglow village in Palampur, told The Federal, while admitting that “there are no other jobs anyway... at least Agniveer gives four years of employment”.

Absentee lawmaker

If the BJP’s Bhardwaj is in a spot in Kangra because the party’s incumbent Kangra MP wasn’t seen in the constituency for most of the past five years, in the Shimla constituency, the saffron party’s sitting MP and candidate Suresh Kashyap is facing protests for being an absentee lawmaker.

Kashyap, president of the BJP’s Himachal unit, had won the Shimla seat in 2019 against Congress veteran Dhani Ram Shandil with a record margin of over 3.27 lakh votes. This time round, though the BJP seems to retain its popularity among the more urban pockets of the constituency, such as Shimla Urban and Nalagarh, there is palpable resentment against the party in rural and semi-rural areas; particularly in the upper Shimla regions of Jubbal-Kotkhai, Rohru and Theog and even in the otherwise pro-BJP pockets of Solan.

The Congress has fielded first term Kasauli MLA Vinod Sultanpuri against Kashyap from the constituency reserved for scheduled caste candidates. Both Sultanpuri, son of former six-term Shimla MP KD Sultanpuri, and Kashyap hail from the Solan district but the Kasauli MLA appears to enjoy a clear edge over his BJP rival even in Solan.

“We had voted for the BJP in the past two elections but this time we will vote for change. Life has become very difficult in the past 10 years; on the one hand there is no control on price rise and on the other, farmers don’t get a fair price for their crop. Agriculture, apple farming and horticulture... there is only loss (sic). Congress has made good promises; we want to give it a chance this time,” says Arvind Chaudhary, a farmer from Paonta Sahib who had come to sell his crop at the sabzi mandi (wholesale vegetable market) in Solan.

Batting for Sukhu

For Solan resident Tanu Negi, it is the Sukhu government’s decision to give Rs 1500 as financial assistance to women that has made her and her family switch their political allegiance from the BJP to the Congress. “It may not seem like a lot of money but under the current circumstances when running a household has become so difficult because of rising prices, it is a big help,” says Negi, while asserting that the Congress should expand the policy to include all women as the current scheme “will not benefit those who get financial assistance under other schemes”.

Tanu’s father, Harsh Negi, a self-proclaimed “Modi bhakt”, says while he continues to be a BJP supporter, he would not vote for Kashyap this time. “He has not done anything for the people. Nobody can get any work done from him. I do not like the Congress but I must admit that the party has been doing well in the state and its leaders are more accessible... I remember when KD Sultanpuri used to be the Shimla MP, we could go to him and get our work done even though he knew we were BJP supporters; I hope his son is the same,” Harsh said.

With a majority of the state’s nearly 10 lakh people who are involved in apple cultivation the concentrated in Shimla constituency, many feel this segment of the electorate population along with the equally decisive “vote bank” of government employees would determine who between Kashyap and Sultanpuri emerges victorious.

“It is a close contest but I think Sultanpuri will win. In terms of proportion to population, Himachal has among the highest number of government employees in the country and right now, most of them favour the Congress because the Sukhu government decided to revert to the Old Pension Scheme. This vote bank will help the Congress across all four Lok Sabha seats. In Shimla, the party will also benefit from the consolidation of people involved in apple cultivation because all of them are angry at the unfulfilled promise of the Modi government regarding reduction of import duty on apples and they are also still upset at the record of the erstwhile Jairam Thakur government, during whose tenure, apple farmers suffered huge losses,” says Tikendra Singh Panwar, former deputy mayor of Shimla.

Bypoll benefit

Panwar, a member of the CPI (M) which has a sizeable support base in the Shimla district, says Sultanpuri will also benefit electorally because the Left party has not fielded a candidate this time.

Shimla-based senior journalist Ashwani Sharma feels the Congress is also likely to benefit in the Lok Sabha elections because they are coinciding with by-elections that would determine the fate of the Sukhu government.

The bypolls for Sujanpur, Gagret, Barsar and Kutlehar (in the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency), Lahaul & Spiti (in Mandi) and Dharamsala (in Kangra) were necessitated because the MLAs from these seats were disqualified in February after they failed to turn up to vote for the Sukhu government on the cut motions moved in the state assembly. The six MLAs had, a day earlier, cross-voted in favour of BJP nominee Harsh Vardhan leading to the defeat of Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha polls and subsequently. The Congress alleged that this was a bid orchestrated by the BJP to topple the Sukhu government.

“Himachal has never seen such politics. The Sukhu government was largely viewed positively by the people and so the BJP’s attempt to topple it was immediately met with public disapproval. Now that the assembly bypolls and Lok Sabha polls are happening together, the narrative of BJP trying to topple Sukhu is even stronger; people are not in favour of such politics... in Shimla, because it is also the state capital, this is helping the Congress even more though none of the disqualified MLAs were from assembly segments of Shimla Lok Sabha,” Sharma said.