Shimla, Mar 4 (PTI) Name of the Congress candidate for the lone Rajya Sabha seat would be disclosed at the time of filing of nomination on Thursday, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Wednesday.
The candidate would be from Himachal Pradesh, he said while interacting with the media here on the occasion of Holi.
March 5 is the last date for filing of nomination for the Rajya Sabha and the polling would be held on March 16. The election is needed as the six-year term of BJP leader Indu Goswami, elected unopposed in 2020, is coming to an end.
“There is neither any suspense nor fear over the election,” Sukhu said, asserting that democracy would not be “sold like previous time”.
With a clear majority in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the Congress’ 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’ 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.
At present there are 40 members of Congress and 28 members of the BJP in the state assembly. A meeting of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Legislative Party has been convened on March 5.
So far, neither the Congress nor the BJP has announced their candidates and BJP leaders have maintained that they would field a candidate only if the Congress candidate is not from Himachal Pradesh.
According to Congress sources, the names being considered 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.
However, the name of Nigam Bandhari has also emerged. Indian Youth Congress (IYC) General Secretary Bhandari hails from Kinnaur district. He was among the IYC activists who held the shirtless demonstration in recent AI impact summit in Delhi. PTI BPL ARB ARB
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