Hamirpur: There is a long list of ticket seekers for five assembly seats of Hamirpur district from the Congress and BJP side both. While, forty-eight persons have applied from BJP side, there are forty-one ticket seekers from Congress side for all the five assembly seats of the district.
Interestingly, none have applied from Bamsan seat from BJP side fully knowing that this seat will go to Member parliament, Prem Kumar Dhumal or any one of his nominee.
Notably, the BJP has three and Congress two MLA’s in the Himachal Vidhan sabha at present. Dhumal had resigned from the seat after his election to Lok sabha in a bye election held in June 2007.
There is heavy rush of candidates from Nadaun seat for the BJP ticket followed by Hamirpur, Nadaunta and Mewa.
Party leaders and workers in four out of five assembly segments have shown their resentment against their sitting MLA’s or the defeated party candidates and have applied for the party tickets. They have not spared the leader of the Opposition in the Vidhan sabha, Ishwar Dass Dhiman, the four times MLA from Mewa (Reserve) seat and the district BJP chief, Baldev Sharma.
On other hand, Congress the ruling party of the state is also flooded with the ticket seekers from the district. The party is a divided house in the district and this practice in the party has been going on since 1972, when Hamirpur was given a full fledged district.
The party has lost last assembly elections due to infighting and its leaders have learnt no lesson from the past defeat and have been toeing the same line to oppose one another during the party meetings and even in front of media.
Deepak Sharma, the district spokesman of the party said that in all forty-one persons have applied for the party nomination from all the five assembly seats of the district. Anita Verma and Sukhvinder Singh Sukhoo, two sitting party MLA’s have also filed their applications from their old seats of Hamirpur and Nadaun respectively.
He said that there were fifteen applicants from Nadaunta, Nine each from Mewa (Reserve) and Bamsan, six from Hamirpur and two from Nadaun seat. He said that former Congress MLA’s Kuldip Singh Pathania, Karam Singh Thakur, Bishan Dutt Lakhanpal and Manjeet Singh Dogra have also applied for the party tickets from Bamsan and Nadaunta respectively.
