With 13 victories since 1951, Mandi remains Congress fortress

Abhinav Vashisht

Kullu, March 26

The Congress has dominated the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and has won 13 times during the 19 General Elections and byelections since 1951. The BJP candidates have won five times and the Janata party candidate won in 1977 elections.

The politics here after 1971 has been propagating around the families of former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and former Union Minister Sukh Ram. Virbhadra Singh remained victorious for three times, Sukh Ram also won the seat thrice and Virbhadra’s wife and the state Congress president Pratibha Singh also secured the victory three times. Lalit Sen had also won this seat for the Congress twice. The Congress candidates Amrit Kaur and Joginder Sen had won the elections in 1951 and 1957, respectively.

However after 1989, the Congress candidates have won from the Mandi Lok Sabha seat six times, while the BJP had remained victorious for five times, with Maheshwar Singh being victorious three times and Ram Swaroop Sharma securing the victory two times. For the last five decades, the Congress high command has been deciding the candidature from the families of Virbhadra Singh and Sukh Ram, whether they have won or faced defeat in the political field. In such a long period, the Congress had once ignored the families and made Kaul Singh its candidate in 1999, but he could not register a win.

All eyes are on the Mandi parliamentary seat and discussions are on regarding the candidature of the Congress party after the BJP has given the ticket to actress Kangana Ranaut. The Congress is in a trouble after the sitting MP from the constituency, Pratibha Singh, has refused to contest the elections. As she had won in the 2021 bypoll, she was widely seen as the most preferable candidate for the Mandi constituency. Sources said that the party high command might try to pacify Pratibha. Now it remains to be seen whether the Congress party is able to prepare Pratibha to contest the elections or fields some other candidate.

The Congress had only five MLAs in the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency having 17 Assembly constituencies, but now the Congress is left with only four MLAs after the membership of Lahaul and Spiti MLA Ravi Thakur ended recently.

The Congress party had fielded senior leader Kaul Singh Thakur in the 1999 General Elections, but he lost to BJP’s Maheshwar Singh by 1,31,025 votes. Whereas in 2019, the Congress had fielded Sukh Ram’s grandson Ashray Sharma, but BJP’s Ram Swaroop Sharma defeated him by a margin of 4,05,459 votes. Pratibha Singh had won the byelections in 2021 by defeating the BJP candidate Brig (retd) Khushal Thakur by a margin of 7,490 votes.

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