congress-clears-three-candidates-for-himachal-assembly-by-polls

Giving way to an interesting battle, the Congress party today fielded BJP rebel, Capt.( retired) Ranjit Singh Rana for Sujanpur Assembly by-poll in Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh. He faces Congress rebel, Rajinder Rana, who was recently disqualified from the Assembly for defying the party whip along with five other Congress rebels, and had later got a BJP ticket to contest the poll.

In the 2022 Assembly by-polls, Rajinder Rana, who fought on a Congress ticket, defeated Ranjit Singh Rana ( in BJP then) by a margin of around 400 votes.
Both are locked in a battle again by swapping their parties, just 15 months after the formation of the Congress government in HP.

According to a release by the All India Congress Committee, former Congress MLA, Rakesh Kalia, who had joined BJP before the 2022 Assembly polls and has come back to the Congress fold ahead of by-polls, has been given a ticket from Una district's Gagret Assembly constituency for by-poll against Chaitanya Sharma, who switched over from Congress to BJP after disqualification from Assembly. 

In the Kutlehar Assembly segment in the Una district, Vivek Sharma is the Congress candidate. He faces Congress rebel, now BJP nominee, Devinder Bhutto in the by-poll.

The Congress is yet to declare the names of candidates in three Assembly segments going to by-polls, namely Dharamshala in Kangra, Badsar in Hamirpur and Lahaul Spiti segment in the tribal Lahaul Spiti district. The party has also not cleared names for Kangra and Hamirpur Assembly segments.