The Congress party’s Himachal Pradesh state unit chief and MP from the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency Pratibha Singh has said that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s work in the state has been better than that of the Congress, reported ANI.
“A lot of things remain to be done in Congress,” said Singh. “As an MP, I keep visiting my constituency and try to interact with the local people and solve their problems. It is from their feedback that I have come to understand that the BJP’s work has been better than ours.”
Her remarks came amidst tensions within the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh after its candidate Abhishek Singhvi lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Harsh Mahajan on Tuesday in the elections for the state’s lone Rajya Sabha seat that was up for grabs, amid cross-voting by six party MLAs.
Senior Congress leaders, including Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, were sent to the hill state on Wednesday to address the concerns of party MLAs.
Pratibha Singh said that she had conveyed her views to Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and urged him to strengthen party’s organisation in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
She said that the BJP “will do a lot of things” on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Congress sees difficulties on the ground. “We are on weak footing,” the Congress leader said. “I can say that it is a difficult time. Still, we have to contest elections and win.”
On Thursday, Singh’s son and Himachal Pradesh minister Vikramaditya Singh offered to resign from the party, but later said he was “not pressing for his resignation” after the chief minister refused to accept it.
Singh told India Today on Thursday that even though the party has managed to remain in power in Himachal Pradesh, it was too early to say that the political crisis has been averted.
"I don't know what will happen tomorrow or in the coming future,” she said. “There were certain issues that could not be decided within a few hours or within a day. It will take time. And then only I can, if we are in a comfortable position, say that the government will last [another five years]."
The Congress has meanwhile set up a six-member coordination committee to address internal differences within the its Himachal Pradesh unit.
The six Congress MLAs, Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur and Chetanya Sharma, who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha elections in favour of the BJP, have been disqualified by the Assembly speaker.
Singh said that it was natural for the MLAs to be upset over the disqualification. She said that had the party sat with them and addressed their concerns, the crisis would have been averted.
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