Gurdaspur victory perks up Congress in Himachal

While Bharatiya Janata Party expected a cakewalk in Himachal Pradesh, which goes to the polls on November 9, the loss of the Gurdaspur parliamentary seat to the Congress on Sunday has come as a major setback to BJP’s ‘Mission Himachal Pradesh’.

The result, in any case, has come as a shot in the arm for the UPA which has won all the four Lok Sabha by-elections held this year. While the Amritsar and Gurdaspur seats were won by the Congress, Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference won the Srinagar seat and IUML, a Congress ally, won the Malappuram seat by defeating both the CPM and the BJP, which came a distant third.

With parts of the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha constituency forming the foothills of Himachal Pradesh, the electoral result in which Sunil Jakhar of Congress defeated Swaran Salaria of the BJP by a huge margin of 1.9 lakh votes, Congress leaders hope for ripple effects in Himachal Pradesh to come to its rescue.

The Indian National Congress, fighting anti-incumbency, infighting and charges of corruption against Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, has been fighting with its back to the wall. Caught between the PCC chief and the Chief Minister, both of whom were at loggerheads, the Congress seemed reconciled to losing Himachal Pradesh and hence may have chosen to go to the election with the man at the helm who has been Chief Minister for as many as five times.

But the BJP is also a divided house. With Prime Minister Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah’s well known preference for Union Health Minister JP Nadda, the old guard led by Shanta Kumar, Prem Kumar Dhumal and his son Anurag Thakur see the writing on the wall. Several BJP legislators, who sense that they may not get re-nominated, are also said to be gravitating towards the Dhumal camp, threatening to contest as rebel candidates if they are denied tickets.

The Gurdaspur electoral debacle has also been a setback to Amit Shah who had overruled nominating the wife of late BJP MP Vinod Khanna whose death led to the by-election. Apparently prompted by yoga guru Ramdev, Shah appears to have settled for Mumbai-based businessman Swaran Salaria. The defeat therefore has undermined Shah’s authority and with Gujarat taking up more time than he had bargained for, Himachal Pradesh has become a little more tough than he may have imagined.

That Shah, of late, has been prone to making political mistakes is also borne out by the backlash being faced by the party following the induction of the son of former Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram, who had to resign and face prosecution in a telecom scam in the 1990’s.