Supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Prem Kumar Dhumal shouted slogans outside the venue of a party meeting in Shimla on Friday, ANI reported. Dhumal was the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for Himachal Pradesh but he lost the Sujanpur Assembly seat on Monday.
Dhumal’s loss has set in motion the party’s search to nominate another chief minister. The BJP may announce the name of the chief minister on Friday, reported PTI.
Meanwhile, another group of party workers shouted slogans in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside the same venue. They said that the chief minister should be picked from among the elected MLAs and no one should lobby for anyone.
These protests were being held at a time when BJP’s central observers – Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar – were at the party’s core committee meeting of newly-elected MLAs. The meeting was held to discuss who the new chief minister of the state will be.
Dhumal has been the state’s chief minister twice before, from March 1998 to March 2003 and from January 2008 to December 2012. In this year’s Assembly elections, he lost to Congress candidate Rajinder Rana in the Sujanpur constituency by 1,919 votes.
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