Virbhadra family not among official LS applicants in state

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 16

As the race for the Lok Sabha tickets in Himachal Pradesh Congress picks up, state’s bigwigs, including former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh’s family, have given the ticket application process a miss.

They, however, remain among top contenders from Mandi segment.

So far, 40 leaders have formally applied to the state unit for the LS tickets for four parliamentary segments in the state. The majority ticket applicants – 15 – are for Shimla reserved constituency followed by 11 for Hamirpur segment and seven each for Kangra and Mandi.

On an average there are 10 ticket applicants per seat in HP indicating a hot race.

But state Congress veterans did not feel the need to apply for the tickets officially. Despite clear indications that Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha Singh or son Vikramaditya Singh are among frontrunners for Mandi seat, neither of the two are among official applicants in the state. Former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Pratibha Singh had represented this LS seat earlier.

Senior Congress leaders and former ministers Kaul Singh Thakur and GS Bali and their kin are also not among formal ticket applicants though Thakur is learnt to be in contention in Mandi and Bali’s son Raghubir Bali is among a serious contender in Kangra.

The few state Congress stalwarts who have applied for tickets and paid the application fee are: Former MPs Dhani Ram Shandil (from Shimla) and Chander Kumar from Kangra; former Speaker Ganguram Musafir from Shimla; former All-India Mahila Congress chief Anita Verma from Hamirpur; former MP KD Sultanpuri’s son Vinod Sultanpuri from Shimla; former minister Thakur Singh Bharmauri from Kangra and former MLA Bumber Thakur from Hamirpur.

Incidentally, former minister and Kullu royal Karan Singh’s son Adityavikram Singh has applied from Mandi segment so has Abhishek Rana, the son of sitting party MLA Rajinder Rana, who had defeated former CM Prem Kumar Dhumal in the last Assembly elections.

Rajinder Rana had, however, unsuccessfully contested the last LS elections against Dhumal’s son Anurag Thakur from Hamirpur.

The Tribune has, meanwhile, learnt that despite not being among the LS ticket applicants in the state, Virbhadra Singh’s family (wife or son) and Kaul Singh Thakur are among contenders from Mandi and GS Bali’s son Raghubir Bali and former minister Sudhir Sharma are in contention from Kangra.

It is also learnt that the Himachal Pradesh Congress Election Committee members have given their individual preferences on every seat to the state party chief in sealed covers.

These sealed preferences will be opened at the meeting of the Himachal LS tickets screening committee consisting of state chief Kuldeep Singh Rathore, CLP leader Mukesh Agnihotri, AICC in charge for Himachal Rajni Patil, AICC secretaries for the state Ranjeet Ranjan and Gurkirat Kotli, and AICC general secretary, organisation, KC Venugopal.

The fee for ticket application in Himachal this year was Rs 50,000 for a general category applicant and Rs 35,000 for a reserved category applicant.