Himachal Pradesh an uphill contest

Snowfall has been delayed this year in Shimla by over a month. But what is keeping Himachal Pradesh’s capital city warm is a flurry of activities, both on the roads and in the skies, in a tightly-contested electoral wrestle. 

Helicopters are whizzing from one constituency to another, ferrying a crowd of political bigwigs, trying to pack in as many poll meetings as possible. Campaigning ends on November 7, two days before the state votes to elect its new Assembly and Chief Minister. There is a scramble to woo voters with rich promises — jobs to all households, tablets and Internet to students, interest-free loans to farmers, helplines to women, and pensions to the aged.

At the centrally-located Rajiv Bhawan, leaders of the ruling Congress convene during the day for the odd press conference. A stone’s throw away, in a five-star hotel on the Mall road, BJP workers are busy making strategies. The traditional rivals have locked horns in all 68 constituencies. Amid all this, a small car makes its way through the winding roads every morning as the centuries-old picturesque town wakes up to its daily bustle. A young man spends the entire day, using a loudspeaker, fitted atop the car, to seek votes for the local CPM candidate.

In the poll-bound Himalayan state, the contest is on the twin poll planks of corruption and development. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh is mired in a disproportionate assets case. But his contender from the BJP, former CM Prem Kumar Dhumal, is also battling the party’s decision to field more than two dozen candidates with criminal cases.

Poll moves

Till the 1967 Assembly elections, the Congress had a monopoly here. After the merger of some of Punjab’s hill areas with Himachal in November 1966, the Congress could win only 34 out of the 60 seats the next year. A post-Emergency Janata wave demolished the Congress in 1977. But, since 1985, the Congress and the BJP have been returning to power alternately. The BJP is banking on the trend, among other elements, to stage a comeback. 

But a gamble by the party’s top brass to run the campaign riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity may not have paid off too well. The party decided to cash in on Modi’s tenure as in-charge of the state for six years, including 1998 when the BJP came to power with Dhumal at the helm for the first time.

Surveys within the party and among voters pointed that the popular vote was with Dhumal. Union Health Minister JP Nadda seemed to have the approval of the top brass to lead the campaign. The tilting of the dominant Rajput vote, which constitutes 38 per cent of the state’s population, towards Virbhadra Singh led to a last-minute meeting of BJP chief Amit Shah with senior leaders to declare Dhumal as the CM candidate.

The Congress, too, had its problems. CM Virbhadra and party president Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu were at loggerheads over ticket distribution. Virbhadra’s demands that he be made the campaign chief and his son be given a ticket from his home turf Shimla (Rural) were finally conceded by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi once it was clear that the septuagenarian CM had the electoral pull.   

Reality & rhetoric

Potshots are hurled on either side faster than a scribe’s blink. Voters say that the real issues have made way for the rhetoric. Himachal Pradesh is reeling under a debt of over Rs 27,910 crore as per a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India report released this April. The public debt has steadily risen over the last few years — from Rs 19,511 crore in 2011-12 to Rs 27,910 crore in 2015-16. The state needs to pay back 62 per cent of this debt in the next seven years.

Yet, neither the Congress manifesto nor the BJP’s vision document has a viable solution to offer. The Congress makes no mention of the debt. The BJP says that an advisory committee will be formed under the CM’s office to help him bring down the debt. Dhumal told DNA that while there’s “not much scope” at this point to steer the state from the debt, the BJP plans to generate an annual income of Rs 600 crore through hydel projects, and create 70,000 jobs to boost the state’s economy.

Harnessing power 

As far as hydel projects go, environmental disasters and displacement of local people in their wake have hounded the government for a long time. Right in time for the elections, CM Virbhadra Singh announced that the state has the potential for 27,436 MW of power, and that it is currently harnessing only 10,351 MW. He announced that approval for over 167 projects in the next four years has been granted. With days left for the elections, he inaugurated two of them. The CM said that during his tenure, 31 projects harnessing 2,067 MW of power were commissioned that led to a revenue of Rs 3,345 crore. 

But, in 1993, when he was at the helm, Virbhadra announced that harnessing hydroelectricity potential will make Himachal India’s richest state —  a target he was to achieve by 2010. But without a policy in place, deadlines were not met. A strong community opposition to displacement also stalled projects. While being silent on environmental degradation and displacement, Dhumal said that during his tenures, he decreased royalty to constructors to meet deadlines. “To check the delay of these projects, I announced that for every year they save on deadlines, I will waive off a per cent from the 12 per cent royalty the government charges,” he said.

GST & DeMo

Congress leader Anand Sharma said that the “hasty implementation” of the GST has taken away over 31 per cent of the jobs in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sector. “It has been three years since PM Modi said that an import duty will be levied on apples, he hasn’t done anything yet,” he said. On the other hand, Dhumal said that the GST will help the GDP expand by as much as 1.5 to 2 per cent. Despite these claims, voters across the hills and valleys of the state have been vocal about the effects of demonetization and GST, and any discussion on the upcoming elections has been incomplete without them.

Female voters   

At 49 per cent, the number of female voters in the state is one of the highest, and in over 12 constituencies, women outnumber men. This includes all five constituencies in Dhumal’s turf Hamirpur. In the 2012 manifesto, the BJP promised each family an induction cooker to woo female voters. Yet now, after the gruesome gangrape and murder of a minor girl in Kotkhai, and the botched up investigation that followed, women are demanding specifics, making safety a formidable poll issue. The BJP has promised a ‘Gudiya’ fund, on the lines of the Nirbhaya Fund — announced by the Centre in 2013 after massive protests against the 2012 gangrape and murder of a paramedical student in Delhi. The BJP has also promised a 24/7 helpline, apart from a safety app and a women’s police force. The Congress, on its part, has also promised a helpline and a safety app. Both parties are, however, silent on the intermittent network connectivity in rural areas. 

The BJP has been mounting pressure on the Congress since the CM’s Facebook page published the names of six men from influential families, and then took it down to say that six Nepali labourers were guilty of the crime.

Every prominent BJP leader had made it a point to rake up the issue in poll meetings. Sharma said that the BJP has unduly exploited the issue. “Law and order in Himachal fares better than other states, and the crime statistics will prove that. On one hand, Modi calls Himachal Pradesh a ‘dev bhoomi’, and on the other, UP CM Yogi Adityanath is talking about law and order here despite his state’s notoriety for crime cases,” said Sharma. He pointed out to the Centre’s Nirbhaya Fund is lying unused.

The BJP has fielded six female candidates, while the Congress has given tickets to three women, including Rajya Sabha member Viplov Thakur who is contesting from Dehra. In all, 19 female candidates are in the fray.  There are a total of 338 candidates in the fray including 16 from the CPM and over 180 independents and a dozen Congress rebels.  With the poll date, November 9, inching closer, the average Himachali voter has a plethora of poll promises to wade through to have the real issues addressed. Its effectiveness will be known on November 18 when the results are announced.