Will Rajinder Rana repeat his luck and win the seat in Sujanpur?

Will the BJP’s Rajinder Rana emerge victorious in the Sujanpur Assembly byelection? While he had beaten Prem Kumar Dhumal in the 2012 Assembly elections from Sujanpur by 1,919 votes, he had won the 2022 Assembly election by a narrow margin of 399 votes.

For the sake of his life, Rana has found himself at the door of his mentor and former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal due to the altered political landscape in the state. Rana, a three-time MLA, has rejoined the BJP after a brief stint with the Congress. After being refused a ticket, he broke away from the BJP in 2012 and ran as an Independent candidate in the Sujanpur sector of the Hamirpur district, winning the Assembly election.

In order to settle a political score, Rana resigned from his position as an independent MLA in 2014 in order to run for the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat on the Congress ticket against Anurag Thakur. Rana consented to quit as an Independent MLA on the understanding that his wife would get a Congress ticket for the Sujanpur Assembly byelection after his resignation because of his close relationship to the then-Criminal Minister, Virbhadra Singh. Nevertheless, Rana’s bold attempt to challenge the Dhumals’ might proved fruitless.

In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Anurag defeated Rana, the 2012 Independent MLA, and Rana’s wife, Anita Rana, also suffered a setback. But Rana turned into a hero in the 2017 Assembly elections when he rocked the political establishment by beating Dhumal, the face of the BJP, by a margin of 1,919 votes.

Rana disobeyed the leadership of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu by voting against Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha election on February 27 together with five other MLAs. Due to the Anti Defection Law, this made it possible for all six MLAs to be disqualified; as a result, they are now running for reelection on BJP tickets.

It is undoubtedly not an easy assignment to win the Assembly byelection on a BJP ticket by requesting Dhumal’s blessings. Even though Rana went to Dhumal’s Sujanpur home after receiving a BJP ticket, it is unclear whether the former Chief Minister will fully endorse him.

Party insiders believe that it is unclear if Sujanpur’s voters would fully back Rana even if Dhumal and Anurag decide to put their differences behind them. It is impossible to ignore the fact that Rana prevailed in the 2022 Assembly election by a narrow margin of 399 votes.