The four municipal elections in key urban towns – Dharamshala, Palampur, Solan and Mandi in Himachal Pradesh --- slated for April 7 will be a test for chief minister Jai Ram Thakur to prove his political acumen and his ability to lead the party in the 2022 Assembly polls.
Thakur, 56, who rose to the top leader’s post after the BJP’s projected chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal lost his election in his home district of Hamirpur, has already completed three years in the power, quite successfully at that.
In Himachal, there have been only two leaders of stature for the BJP, Dhumal and the veteran Shanta Kumar. Thakur’s elevation to the chief minister post, with a nod from the RSS, represented a generational change in the party.
Winning the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on the four seats with a record margin --- highest vote share of 69.11 per cent in the country --- winning two Assembly byelections after that, and more recently, the good showing in the panchayat elections certainly point towards the BJP’s deep penetrations into the Congress strongholds. Earlier in the 2014 parliamentary poll, the BJP had polled 53.85 per cent despite Congress being in the power in Himachal Pradesh.
Yet, barring Prem Kumar Dhumal, no BJP government has completed a full five-year term or returned to power. The BJP, this time around, has a clear agenda to break the jinx. No wonder Thakur has chosen to fight the municipal corporation elections to the four towns on party symbols. This has made the civic body's elections immensely important to measure his own acceptability on the performance graph.
The last time a civic body elections was fought on the BJP symbol was in 2012 under Dhumal but the move had boomeranged as the BJP lost the prestigious Shimla corporation, and later that year, the Assembly elections.
In October 2020, Thakur got three new municipal corporations --- Palampur, Solan and Mandi created. Of these urban bodies, one – Mandi falls is his own home district, while Dharamshala and Palampur are in the politically-hot Kangra district and industrial town of Solan. The Shimla Municipal Corporation currently under the BJP will go to the polls next year, probably in May-June.
One clear advantage to the BJP is evident as Virbhadra Singh, 86, is no longer actively involved and the Congress is in disarray in terms of local leadership and organisation structure. It will be a keenly fought contest as Thakur knows the senior BJP leadership in Delhi will be closely watching the outcome, and he would certainly not like to be in the same position as his other hill-state counterpart in Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat.
Apart from the party machinery mobilised to man the entire election campaign in the four towns, Thakur has turned a star campaigner with his entire cabinet team and MLAs.
Junior finance and corporate affairs minister Anurag Thakur, who is the party’s young face at the national level now, is also expected to join Thakur and the BJP team as the party’s top leader. National BJP president JP Nadda, currently busy in West Bengal, Assam and other elections, is keeping himself off from the Himachal Pradesh scene.
The elections being held amid a surge in Covid cases in the districts bordering Punjab has given the Congress a hammer to hit the BJP leaders with, including the chief minister. “When the chief minister preaches to the people to wear masks, observe social distancing and also imposes a ban on social, religious and cultural gatherings, he should also follow those rules. Just look what he is he is doing. Isn’t he (CM) and his team super-spreaders of Covid in Himachal Pradesh? There is a blatant misuse of official machinery and state-owned helicopters in the campaign. They want to win the election by hook or by crook to save his chair after the change in Uttarakhand leadership,” alleged leader of the Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri.
