Campaigning for Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh byelections ends

Kullu: The campaigning for the three assembly constituencies of Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh ended on Monday evening. The byelections on the three seats are scheduled to be held on July 10.
On the last day of the campaigning, the political parties organised rallies and roadshows in a last ditch effort to woo the electorate.
The byelections in these three assembly constituencies were necessitated after independent MLAs Hoshyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh) resigned from their assembly memberships on March 22.
All the three joined the BJP a day later on March 23 and were given tickets by the party to contest the bypolls.
The resignations submitted by the independent legislators were accepted by Vidhan Sabha speaker Kuldeep Pathania after over two months on June 3.
The Congress has fielded chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur against BJP’s Hoshyar Singh in the Dehra assembly seat, while Pushpinder Verma has been pitted against Ashish Sharma in the Hamirpur assembly constituency.
It will be a battle between Congress party’s Hardeep Singh Bawa and BJP’s K L Thakur in the Nalagarh assembly seat.
On the last day of the campaigning, Congress kept its focus on the Dehra seat where CM Sukhu addressed three rallies in support of his wife. Sukhu reiterated that Hoshyar Singh was part of a “conspiracy to topple the democratically elected Congress govt” in the state.
“As an elected representative Hoshyar Singh never did anything for the people of Dehra, but he surely sat on a dharna in Shimla to force the Speaker to accept his resignation and even moved the high court in this regard. Why? Because he was part of a conspiracy to bring down the govt,” claimed Sukhu.
He accused Hoshyar Singh of deceiving the people of Dehra. “Hoshyar Singh was elected by the people so that he could serve Dehra. But he chose to serve the BJP. He is not worried about the people or development of Dehra. He is only worried about his own interests. The people of Dehra have understood this and will teach him a lesson in this byelection,” he added.
A total of 2,55,417 general voters and 3,923 service electors will exercise their right to franchise in the byelections on July 10. The Nalagarh assembly constituency has the highest number of general voters (94,755), followed by Dehra (86,520) and Hamirpur (78,065).