With the date for the results of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections nearing, voters and contestants alike are waiting with bated breath.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently banked on the ‘Hindutva card’ in Gujarat, it is unlikely that such an issue will echo among voters in Himachal Pradesh.
While politics in Gujarat is greatly influenced by the societal divisions that play a significant role during elections, Himachal Pradesh’s politics runs along different lines. Himachal is a small state with a high literacy rate, and the electorate here largely banks on issues of governance and development, leaving behind erstwhile factors such as comparing the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Himachal, the horticulturist-agriculturist divide and caste issues.
The prime feature of the current elections in Himachal Pradesh is the absence of the Modi wave.
Experts, politicians and psephologists are finding it difficult to predict the results, with about a dozen seats such as Dehra, Una, Haroli, Drang, Shimla Urban and Gramin, Theog, Kotkhai, Naina Devi, Solan and others hanging in the balance.
No Third Party or Front
Politics in Himachal Pradesh has broadly revolved around a bipolarity for about 30 years with the Congress and the BJP being the chief political parties.
The idea of a third party or front has failed barring a few instances of partial success –Himachal Log Rag Party was founded in 1967 by Thakur Sen Negi and JBL Khachi, Janata Dal was born in 1990, Himachal Vikas Congress was started by Pandit Sukh Ram in 1997 and Himachal Lokhit Party by Maheshwar Singh in 2012.
Parties like the BSP, the SP, the CPI, the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress have also tried their luck, but with no significant gains. Despite being a consistent contender, the Left has not had much of a presence in the state.
Defection is also not new to Himachal – the present elections too have witnessed a fair share of political turncoats.
For instance, Anil Sharma, rural development minister in the Virbhadra Singh government left the Congress to join the BJP.
BJP & Congress’ Common Woes
While the Congress strengthened its position by ending the governmental and organisational divide and declared Virbhadra Singh as its chief ministerial candidate, the BJP lagged on this front as its central leadership experimented with the UP strategy of declaring the candidate after elections.
This could have adversely affected the BJP’s performance as was visible from the initial campaign that didn’t play out effectively until the party named Professor Prem Kumar Dhumal as its chief ministerial candidate. Dhumal carries a lot of clout and influence within the party.
Some common problems that have plagued both dominant parties in Himachal are intra-party feuds, dynastic politics and issues with allocation of tickets in certain pockets. Ticket allotment affected the BJP in constituencies such as Banjar, Palampur, Chamba, Bhoranj and Shimla Gramin, and the Congress in Shimla Urban and Mandi, among others.
Four Congress candidates are the wards of Virbhadra Singh, Kaul Singh, RN Sharma and BB Butail. Even the BJP has not been exempted from this charge.
Grievances Against Congress
While the long-standing rift between Congress’ state president Thakur Sukhvinder Singh and Virbhadra Singh resulted in the latter wielding full charge of the election campaign, MLA GS Bali’s supporters sloganeered for the former’s chief ministership during Rahul Gandhi’s visit to the state.
The key charges against the incumbent government are corruption and crime. The violence graph has gone up in the state in the last few years. The public angst surrounding the murder of a forest guard in Karsog and the gangrape of the minor girl ‘Gudiya’ in Kotkhai, to say nothing of the subsequent failure in nabbing the culprits, has discredited the government significantly.
The government’s lackadaisical approach in dealing with such incidents has turned out to be a major issue that has figured constantly in political debates, and the political speeches of the BJP and the Left.
Anti-Incumbency Factor
What has kept the Congress government in the game is its performance in employment generation, opening up of new educational and health institutions and several development schemes. The government has been successful in communicating its achievements and future programmes to the electorate. However, a significant number of foundation-stone ceremonies and declarations still remain unaddressed, other grievances being poor road conditions, health hazards and poor water supply.
The discontentment of the state employees (about 2.5 lakh) with respect to department promotion schemes and the untimely release of dearness allowance is yet another factor that may work against the Congress.
However, the nearly 30,000 strong contractual and para-employees seem to be content with the reduction of time for the regularisation of their services from five to three years. The state employees have lost the strong leverage they previously enjoyed due to the weakening of their organisations over the years.
In conclusion, the election results are awaited in the backdrop of an anti-incumbency factor that has largely alternated the governments since 1985 between the two dominant parties, and this time, it is the BJP’s turn.
(The writer is chairman, department of political science, HP University, Shimla. He can be reached @Harish070. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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