Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Youth Affairs and Sports, Anurag Thakur, who is a four-time MP in a row and is a BJP candidate for the fifth time from Hamirpur Parliamentary constituency in Himachal Pradesh, has reasons to begin strong.
Thakur, who started his journey into electoral politics from a by-poll in 2008, after his father, then MP, Prem Kumar Dhumal became the Chief Minister of HP for the second time, has made a fair base for himself in the constituency, which includes Hamirpur, Una and Bilaspur districts apart from two Assembly segments of Kangra district and one from Mandi district.
Although the pattern of polling in Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in the literate state of Himachal Pradesh has been different. Yet, in the 2022 Assembly polls, the results were alarmingly bad for the BJP, which could not win a single seat in Hamirpur, the home district of Thakur, and got only five out of the total 17 Assembly seats in the Hamirpur Parliamentary constituency The BJP scored nil in Thakur's home district Hamirpur. The Congress got 10 and the independents two.
It initially appeared that with Congress having Chief Minister, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Deputy Chief Minister, Mukesh Agnihotri from the Hamirpur Parliamentary constituency, things would not be that easy for the sitting MP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
However, within 14 months of Congress rule, the ruling Congress party in Himachal Pradesh faced a big revolt in the Hamirpur and Una districts. Four Congress MLAs out of the total six rebels, who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha poll and were later disqualified for defying the whip in the Assembly, come from Hamirpur and Una districts.
One Independent MLA, who supported the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha poll, and is now facing an FIR by the Congress into the issues about the reported happenings during and after the revolt by Congress MLAs, also comes from Hamirpur district. The rebel Congress MLAs are said to be staying outside the state, pending their case against their disqualification in the Supreme Court.
All these MLAs are supposedly being together at the behest of the opposition BJP, which is reportedly eyeing the numbers to engineer the fall of the Congress government in Himachal.
Apart from Narendra Modi’s hold and his standing, sitting MP, Thakur is advantaged at the outset, with political equations going haywire for Congress in the Hamirpur Parliamentary constituency just ahead of Lok Sabha polls. One of the rebels, who is now disqualified from the Assembly, Rajendra Rana ( Sujanpur) was the one, who defeated Thakur's father and Chief Ministerial candidate of BJP in the 2017 Assembly polls, Prem Kumar Dhumal, bringing transition in BJP politics.
“I am thankful to the party leadership for expressing faith in me and giving me a Lok Sabha ticket from Hamirpur Parliamentary constituency for the fifth time. I assure the party that under the leadership of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, I will take his nationalist policies to the people and ensure that all four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal are won by the BJP to contribute to the party’s resolution to cross the 400 mark this time,” said Thakur, after his name was finalised from Hamirpur, along with Suresh Kashyap, sitting MP, from Shimla (reserved).
The BJP is yet to take the call on candidates for Mandi and Kangra Lok Sabha seats.
The Congress party, on the other hand, is so engrossed in handling the recent crisis in the state, that not even a single name has been cleared for the four seats in Himachal Pradesh so far.
The BJP had made a clean sweep in Lok Sabha polls in Himachal Pradesh in the 2014 and 2019 Assembly elections in Modi wave. Later, in 2021, Congress party’s Pratibha Singh won the Mandi Lok Sabha seat in a by-poll, which was held after the demise of BJP MP from Mandi, Ram Swaroop Sharma.
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