The unceremonious exit of senior Congress leader Vidya Stokes from the Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh has landed the Congress in an embarrassing situation.
The 90-year-old leader’s nomination papers were rejected in Theog because the All India Congress Committee delayed declaring her the party candidate and the number of proposers in her papers was not enough.
She first decided not to contest to allow Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to contest from Theog. But sensing a tougher fight here, Mr. Singh decided to try his luck from nearby Arki, which made Ms. Stokes to file her nomination from Theog. The party high command had by then allotted the ticket to a young leader from the ‘Rahul brigade’, Deepak Rathore, who is otherwise a greenhorn in the area’s politics.
Now, after Ms. Stokes’ inability to contest from this traditional Congress stronghold and her refusal to campaign for Mr. Rathore, the battle for the constituency has almost become a straight fight between the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the BJP.
Bearing the name
Most people in the area believe that the former central committee member and State secretary of the CPI(M), Rakesh Singha, who is related to Ms. Stokes and belongs to the same village of Thanedhar in Kotgarh, will inherit her legacy.
Ms. Stokes’s family has been greatly respected in the constituency from the time of her father-in-law, Samuel Satyananda Stokes, a pioneer in cultivating apples in the area. Shimla and the other eight districts in the hill State are thankful to him for revolutionising their agrarian economy and shifting it from traditional crops to the cash crop.
The people here have never let down the family and elected Ms. Stokes and her husband at least nine times since 1972, said Rajendra Chauhan of Thanedhar. The BJP has fielded Rakesh Verma, a former MLA but originally a Congress leader who had joined the BJP for opposing Ms. Stokes here.
