Congress announces candidates for by-polls in Himachal Pradesh

Congress announces candidates for by-polls in Himachal Pradesh

The Congress has announced names of candidates for the by-polls to be held on July 10 in two Assembly constituencies Hamirpur and Nalagarh of Himachal Pradesh.

The party is yet to declare the candidate for the third Assembly constituency Dehra.

Congress General Secretary K C Venugopal released the list after the approval of the party high command.

The party has announced the names of Pushpinder Verma from Hamirpur and Hardeep Singh Bawa, a five-time Himachal INTUC president from Nalagarh.

Both had contested the Assembly elections in 2022 and had been defeated by independent candidates Ashish Sharma and K L Thakur, respectively. This is for the second time they will be pitted against their old rivals in the by-polls.

The elections in these three ACs were necessitated after the resignation of three independent legislators who tendered their resignation to State Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on March 22 after which they joined BJP the next day.

However, since the Speaker did not accept their resignation they even approached the High Court and staged a sit-in protest in the State Legislative Assembly premises on March 30.

Two months later the Speaker accepted their resignation on June 3, after Lok Sabha polls and by-elections in the six Assembly constituencies.

They had earlier supported BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha elections held on February 27 along with six of the six Congress rebel MLAs who had cross-voted.

These six rebel Congress MLAs too resigned and joined BJP and contested the by-polls in these Assembly segments on the BJP ticket.

BJP has given tickets to these former independent candidates of these ACs, Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and two-time MLAs K L Thakur (Nalagarh) and Hoshyar Singh (Dehra).