Congress party has tried to throw up the challenge of ‘stature’ in the Kangra Parliamentary constituency in Himachal Pradesh by fielding former Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Anand Sharma against BJP’s low-profile nominee Rajeev Bhardwaj.
The 71-year-old Congress leader, who has been Rajya Sabha MP from Himachal Pradesh thrice and once from Rajasthan, has been given a ticket to fight his maiden electoral battle for Lok Sabha from outside home with just one month to go for polls in Himachal. He belongs to the Shimla district, which is part of the Shimla Parliamentary constituency (reserved) and has so far contested only one election from the Shimla Assembly constituency in 1982, which he lost to BJP’s Daulat Ram Chauhan.
His ticket may have been decided late amid a crisis of candidates with Congress, with not many Congress leaders interested in contesting the poll, and he may have to work very hard in his first Lok Sabha poll to strike a chord with people at this age at a new place. But, his entry into the electoral battlefield has instilled life into the Congress rank and files in the Kangra Parliamentary constituency, at least for now.
Sources close to Anand Sharma said he has a name in politics and has contributed a lot for the UPA government as a minister and as AICC spokesman in Congress, and has hence been picked up keeping in view possibilities in Delhi shortly.
“Anand Sharma has been a national leader for long and has a good grasp of issues of the state and the centre. He has national stature and is capable of taking up issues related to the ground and policy matters very effectively in public, being a good orator.
The people of Kangra will prefer him against the BJP candidate,” said Kewal Singh Pathania, Deputy Chief Whip of the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh.
Though there are many critics of Anand Sharma in the state Congress also as he has been a national level leader with not much stake in Himachal Pradesh, many in the party believe that for Lok Sabha elections, he could turn out to be a better choice than many others who were earlier considered for the Lok Sabha ticket.
Even otherwise, in all the Assembly elections in the past ( leaving the previous one), Anand Sharma has been quite active in taking the lead in planning and strategy for the poll campaign, sitting in the party office.
Anand Sharma who is likely to begin his poll campaign in Kangra on 3 May, according to party leaders in Kangra, will not only draw the attention of the people straight away due to his stature, but he is also due to get the advantage of the sitting Congress MLAs in 12 out of 17 Assembly segments in Kangra Parliamentary constituency, which includes parts of Chamba as well.
There are two ministers, one Deputy Chief Whip, one Chairman of Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and one Deputy Chairman of State Planning Board from Kangra district in the present government. The speaker of the HP Assembly comes from the Chamba district.
Even though the party decided on the candidate for the Kangra Parliamentary constituency only on 30 April, most of the Congress MLAs have been moving around in the field after the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections since mid of March as this election would also reflect on their popularity in their constituencies, 15 months after Congress came into power in HP.
The Congress MLAs have already made it an issue in public that the BJP changed the ticket of sitting MP, Kishen Kapoor, who won by 4.77 lakh votes last time, on the grounds of his poor performance in the last five years.
The BJP has a mixed reaction to the announcement of the Congress ticket as the party is unable to comprehend the impact so far. The party nominee from Kangra Rajeev Bhardwaj, 62, who has been a loyalist of former Chief Minister, Shanta Kumar in BJP, is contesting his first Lok Sabha election.
He has personally covered much ground after the declaration of his name over the last month, but the comparison of stature and the capacity to lead may pose a hurdle for him to an extent with Anand Sharma joining the fray, especially as it would almost be a direct contest between Congress and BJP.
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