Shimla, March 3 A meeting of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Legislative Party has been convened on March 5, the last day for filing nominations for the election to the sole Rajya Sabha seat in the state.
The main opposition, the BJP, has not yet announced its entry into the fray for the March 16 election.
With a clear majority in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the Congress's victory is a foregone conclusion, but the party is haunted by its bitter experience in the last Rajya Sabha election, where it lost the seat to the BJP despite having 40 MLAs and the backing of three Independents.
In the last election in February 2024, BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan defeated Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi after they ended in a tie as six Congress MLAs cross-voted in favour of the BJP. The three Independents also voted against the Congress, and both candidates polled 34 votes each.
This year, neither the Congress nor the BJP has announced their candidates yet.
While Congress leaders say the party high command will take a final call, the BJP maintains that it would enter the contest only if the Congress candidate is from outside the state.
However, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan on Tuesday asserted that the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) is united and will stand like a rock with Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, asserting that the Congress will win irrespective of whether its candidate was from the state or not.
He said the six Congress MLAs who voted against the party in 2024 had faced the consequences, and there were no such apprehensions this time.
In the Assembly bypolls that followed the disqualification of six Congress MLAs and the resignation of three Independents, the Congress had won six seats while the BJP won three, raising its tally from 25 to 28.
The election this year was necessitated by the death of BJP leader Indu Goswami, who was elected unopposed in 2020.
Naresh Chauhan, media advisor to the chief minister, on Tuesday asserted that the Congress has numerical strength in the Assembly and the party high command will decide its candidate.
He called upon all the political parties to uphold democratic values and established conventions in the larger interest of the state.
Reflecting on the events during the last election, Chauhan remarked that what transpired earlier was neither consistent with democratic traditions nor conducive to the state's interests. Such occurrences, he said, foster political instability and mistrust without benefiting any political formation.
According to party sources, the names being considered by the Congress this year include former Union minister Anand Sharma, former state president Pratibha Singh (wife of late former chief minister Virbhadra Singh), Congress in-charge for the state Rajni Patil, Health Minister Dhani Ram Shandil, former Education Minister Asha Kumari, IT advisor to the chief minister Gokul Butail, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera and the chief minister's loyalists, including his political advisor Sunil Bittu and Advocate General Anup Ratan.
Meanwhile, sources said, some Congress veterans were of the view that the legacy of C L Verma, the first and three-time Rajya Sabha member from the state, should be respected, and hence his grandson Ranveer Verma should be considered.
BJP media coordinator Karan Nanda said the saffron party would field a candidate only if the Congress candidate was not from Himachal Pradesh.
