Shimla, Oct 18 (IANS) The hills of Himachal Pradesh have again warmed up to election fever - this time for the Nov 7 by-elections, with both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress kicking off their poll campaigns.
The by-elections will be held for the Rohru and Jawali constituencies.

The Congress has pitted Manjit Singh Thakur and former minister Sujan Singh Pathania from Rohru and Jawali, respectively, against BJP’s Khushi Ram Balnatah and Baldev Raj Chaudhary.

The Congress had won Rohru in the 2007 assembly elections, while the BJP got the Jawali seat.

This time, both the Congress and BJP have pitted greenhorns in one seat each.

While the Congress preferred to try Thakur from Rohru for the first time, the BJP favoured Chaudhary from Jawali. Both are not familiar names in their constituencies and are party workers.

In both the seats, the Congress and BJP have ignored the aspirations of their MPs - Virbhadra Singh and Rajan Sushant. Both were keen to get the tickets for their wives, Pratibha Singh and Sudha Sushant, respectively.

Rohru and Jawali fell vacant after Virbhadra Singh and Sushant won the Lok Sabha elections in May.

Virbhadra Singh, who has been chief minister five times and is currently union steel minister, and Sushant have extensively toured their respective constituencies ahead of the official announcement of the nominees.

Sudha Sushant, a lecturer, had taken premature retirement to make her electoral debut, while Pratibha Singh had made public her date for filing the nomination papers.

In the 2007 elections, Virbhadra Singh had defeated BJP’s Balnatah by 14,137 votes, whereas Sushant defeated Pathania of the Congress by a margin of 5,100 votes.

Congress legislative party president Vidya Stokes said: “We will soon launch the election campaign. The decision of the party command (regarding finalising names) has been overwhelmingly accepted by the cadre. We will expose the misdeeds of the ruling BJP government in the past 21 months.”

Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said: “We are going to create history during this election by wining the Rohru seat. Resentment within the Virbhadra Singh camp (over non-allotment of ticket to Pratibha Singh) would be beneficial for us.”

In the May general elections, the BJP managed to win the Shimla seat for the first time, which was a known Congress bastion. Rohru is part of the Shimla parliamentary seat.

In the 2007 elections to the 68-member assembly, the BJP won 41 seats, the Congress 23, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) one and independents three seats. The BSP legislator later joined the BJP.