Himachal polls: Changing his battleground, Virbhadra fights a battery of BJP star campaigners

Before the campaigning for the Himachal Pradesh assembly polls began, the fight was between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It has now boiled down to the Congress Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh versus the BJP.

While the BJP has been carpet bombing the Himachali landscape with its top guns from the Centre including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and a whole lot of central ministers, Virbhadra has emerged as the sole star campaigner for his party.

Whatever the results of the battle, he is giving the entire BJP poll machinery one hell of a fight devising strategies and countering the attacks coming the Congress way as he hops around the constituencies.

The message that has gone down the electorate is that Virbhadra proved to be a winner in the battle of nerves with the BJP top brass – particularly Amit Shah – that was eventually compelled to deviate from its strategy and declare former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal as its face.

Virbhadra changing his constituency to Arki in Solan district is also a major part of the discussion among the masses indulging in political gossip on buses, in tea stalls and other places.

While his supporters call it a masterstroke, his detractors are of the opinion that he was unsure of a victory in Theog seat that had been offered to him by Congress veteran Vidya Stokes and hence had to look for a safer haven.

His moving to Arki spells a new in the Congress politics in the state. This is the first time in the last 40 years that a Congress chief ministerial candidate is contesting outside the Shimla district. The last one to do so was the first chief minister of the state Yashwant Singh Parmar.

Arki seems to have embraced him with open arms. This non-descript constituency which is quite big in size, having more than 83,000 voters, was once a Congress citadel. It has seen BJP leader Govind Ram emerge victorious on the last two occasions, thanks to the prevailing infighting among the Congress.

“Otherwise how would you explain the official candidate polling 15,000 votes, the rebel polling 10,000 votes and the party losing the seat by a slender margin,” pointed out a Congress worker.

The party had fielded a young leader Sanjay Awasthi on this seat last time. The people are of the opinion that over the last five years he has done tremendous work on the ground and even the BJP workers acknowledge that Awasthi would have been very difficult to defeat if he had contested again on this seat.

“The way he galvanised the youth for the Congress is something that all politicians should learn from,” points out a Congress supporter Sushil Pathak, a priest who performs birth and death rites for his livelihood.

In fact, thinking that Awasthi would be the candidate from the Congress, the BJP had dropped Govind Ram and instead fielded a young face in Rattan Singh Pal who is contesting the polls for the first time.

A commission agent and an agriculturist, Pal is now proving to be a lightweight in front of Virbhadra although he has a group of committed supporters working very hard for him. Even union minister Jagat Prakash Nadda, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur have turned up in this constituency to garner support for him.