Parties warm up for polls ahead, warm up to ticket battles

SHIMLA: In the 2014 parliamentary election, Mandi constituency had witnessed an interesting battle between Rampur royal and Congress leader Pratibha Singh and a commoner and BJP candidate Ram Swaroop Sharma. With parliamentary elections due next year, former minister Kaul Singh Thakur and Pratibha Singh are among the main contenders in Congress, Kullu royal Maheshwar Singh and Kargil war hero Brig (retd) Khushal Thakur are among the main contenders for BJP ticket along with Ram Swaroop Sharma in Mandi constituency.
In 2014, BJP had won all four seats of Mandi, Shimla, Kangra and Hamirpur. This time there is speculation that the party might change the tickets in some seats. Senior BJP leader Maheshwar Singh in the past had represented Mandi seat three times, while Khushal Thakur was among the front runners for the party ticket in 2014.
In Congress, former chief minister Virbhadra Singh-led camp is expected to bat for the candidature of Pratibha Singh, while rival camp headed by HPPCC president Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is expected to back the candidature of Kaul Singh Thakur. Both Maheshwar Singh and Kaul Singh Thakur had faced defeat in the assembly election from Kullu and Drang seats respectively.
In Shimla parliamentary seat, suspense continues on the candidature of sitting MP Virender Kashyap with speculations doing the round that party might field a woman candidate this side while Congress on its part could either bat for Vinod Sultanpuri or Solan MLA Col Dhani Ram Shandil.
In Kangra seat, there is suspense whether party might field senior leader and sitting MP Shanta Kumar considering his age, while Congress is witnessing the battle of ticket between its two senior leaders G S Bali and Sudhir Sharma. Both Bali and Sharma had lost assembly election from Nagrota Bagwan and Dharamshala constituencies respectively.
In Hamirpur seat,, BJP is all set to field sitting MP Anurag Thakur who had won this seat thrice in a row while Congress might be fielding a new candidate this time as Rajender Rana who had contested from here last time is now sitting MLA from Sujapur seat, Speculations are doing the rounds that Virbhadra camp wants to field Rana’s son from here while Sukhu camp is batting for Rajesh Dharmani who had lost assembly election from Ghumarwin, sources said.
In coming election, while BJP is facing the challenge of repeating the performance of 2014 then Congress is facing the challenge of opening its account in the election.