Aware of Kangana’s celebrity appeal, Congress will devise a plan for Mandi today
The delay in deciding on candidates has caused the Congress to fall behind in the election campaign. It will lay out its plans for the Mandi Lok Sabha seat tomorrow. Vikramaditya Singh, the Congress candidate, and Kangana Ranaut, the nominee for the BJP, are expected to fight it out in a close race.
The announcement of the candidates for the six Assembly byelections and the Lok Sabha seats in Kangra and Hamirpur is keenly anticipated by Congress activists. At a crucial meeting that will take place today, the ruling party will devise a plan to hold onto the Mandi Lok Sabha seat. AICC observer Sanjay Dutt will debate state Congress president Pratibha Singh, chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, and party candidate Vikramaditya Singh, a minister in the public works department, in the Mandi seat. Because Kangana is running for office, the constituency is receiving a lot of media attention.
The plan of action for the Congress is to gain as much ground as possible in Vikramaditya’s hometown of Rampur as well as in the three tribal Assembly segments of Kinnaur, Lahaul-Spiti, and Bharmour in Chamba. In the Rampur Lok Sabha byelection in 2021, Pratibha held a 20,000-vote advantage, although the BJP had taken the seat by surprise in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The grandson of Pandit Sukh Ram, Ashray Sharma, campaigned for office in that election on a Congress ticket.
With four Assembly segments in the Kullu district—Kullu, Manali, Banjar, and Anni—the Congress is hoping to gain ground. However, Vikramaditya’s future would depend on how much support the Congress can get in the Mandi district.
The home seat of Leader of the Opposition Jai Ram Thakur, the Seraj Assembly sector, alone has the potential to upend the Congress’s calculations, since the BJP is expected to secure a commanding advantage.
The Congress would need to use cunning to sway voters in its favor since it knows it will be difficult to overcome Kangana’s appeal as an actress. Vikramaditya has an edge since both Pratibha Singh and Virbhadra Singh, the six-time chief minister, have three times each held the Mandi parliamentary constituency.
It is expected that Kangana would make it very tough for the Congress to hold the Mandi seat, nevertheless, since the BJP has an early advantage in the election campaign. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP had won all four of the Himachal Pradesh seats; however, in the 2021 byelection that was required due to the passing of BJP MP Ram Swaroop, the Congress won the seat in Mandi.
During the 2021 Mandi byelection, the BJP was in control in both Himachal Pradesh and the Central government. However, Pratibha defeated the candidate of the governing party, Brig Khushal Thakur (retd), who was a hero of the Kargil War, to take the seat. Riding high on the sympathies of people after her husband Virbhadra Singh’s death, Pratibha won the byelection by a narrow margin.
