Raj Babbar of Gurgaon, Anand Sharma of Kangra, and Satpal Raizada of Hamirpur are fielded by the Congress

Today, the Congress announced their candidacies for the Kangra Lok Sabha seat in Himachal Pradesh, led by senior Congressman and former Union Minister Anand Sharma, and Gurgaon, led by actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar.

Babbar will compete against Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh in Gurgaon, while Sharma (71), a BJP veteran and former Chief Minister Shanta Kumar’s confidant, Rajiv Bhardwaj, will face him in Kangra.

The Congress has selected Satpal Raizada to run against Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, who is running for a fifth consecutive term from Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. Satpal Raizada lost the 2022 Himachal Assembly election against BJP’s Satpal Satti in Una.

The significance of Anand Sharma’s candidacies stems from the party’s recent defeat by the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election. Anand Sharma reportedly became enraged with the party leadership after the occurrence in which Congress candidate Abhishek Singhvi lost to Harsh Mahajan of the BJP for the Rajya Sabha. Sharma is running for the Lok Sabha for the first time. In 1982, he ran for the Shimla Assembly seat.

The BJP has nominated state vice-president Rajiv Bhardwaj in place of incumbent MP Kishan Kapoor, who won by a record margin in 2019.

In the Himachal vote of 2022, the Congress secured 11 out of Kangra’s 17 Assembly seats.

Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the Leader of Opposition in the Haryana Assembly and a former chief minister of Haryana, supported Raj Babbar’s candidacy. Babbar has served in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha twice each.

In addition, Bhushan Patil, the Union Minister of Commerce and Food for the BJP, was named by the Congress as their nominee for the Mumbai North parliamentary seat.