Congress wins Fatehpur bypoll in Himachal

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, November 2

The BJP on Tuesday suffered a setback in Kangra district as it lost the Fatehpur bylection. Congress candidate Bhawani Singh Pathania defeated his nearest rival Baldev Thakur of the BJP by 5,789 votes.

Independent candidate and former BJP MP and five-time party MLA Rajan Sushant dealt a severe blow to the prospects of the ruling party in the byelection as he polled 12,927 votes.

The winning Congress candidate got 24,449 votes whereas the BJP candidate managed 18,660 votes.

Congress campaign incharge for Fatehpur, Rajinder Rana, told The Tribune that the people of the state and Fatehpur had given a clear mandate against price rise. The people had punished the BJP for causing unprecedented price rise in the country in petrol, diesel, LPG and edible oils. The overall increase in prices had severely hit the poor and middle classes. A person earning Rs 10,000 per month was finding it hard to even meet his monthly family expenses, said Rana.

Minister for forest, sports and youth affairs, Rakesh Pathania, said price rise was a major issue during the byelection. “The people were angry at the price rise though we tried to explain to them the reasons,” he said. When asked if infighting in the BJP was a reason for the defeat, Pathania said it was not a major issue. “Though the defeat is a setback, we will bounce back in the 2022 Assembly election,” Pathania said.

The BJP was in the lead after 10 rounds of counting. The areas in which the BJP got initial lead of about 1,300 votes were the strongholds of the party. These areas were merged in the Fatehpur Assembly constituency from the Nurpur constituency in the last delimitation exercise. Thereafter, the Congress candidate got a comfortable lead in all remaining 15 rounds of counting.