The Congress has fielded Kamlesh Kumari, the wife of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, as candidate for the Dehra Assembly constituency in Kangra district for the by-poll to be held on July 10.

Congress general Secretary K C Venugopal released the list on Tuesday after approval from AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge.

Advertisement

Kamlesh Kumari hails from Dehra Assembly Constituency and will make her electoral debut.

She will take on two-time independent MLA Hoshyar Singh who won the Assembly elections in 2017 amd 2022.

Hoshyar Singh will now contest the by-polls on the BJP ticket.

Congress on Monday had announced the names of Pushpinder Verma from Hamirpur and Hardeep Singh Bawa, a five-time Himachal INTUC president from Nalagarh.

The elections in these three ACs was necessitated after the resignation of three independent legislators who tendered their resignation to State Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on March 22 after which they joined BJP the next day.

However, since the Speaker did not accept their resignation they even approached the High Court and staged a sit-in protest in the State Legislative Assembly premises on March 30.

Two months later the Speaker accepted their resignation on June 3, after Lok Sabha polls and by-elections in the six Assembly constituencies.

They had earlier supported BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha elections held on February 27 along with six of the six Congress rebel MLAs who had cross-voted.

These six rebel Congress MLAs too resigned and joined BJP and contested the by-polls in these Assembly segments on the BJP ticket.

BJP has given tickets to these former independent candidates of these ACs, Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and two-time MLAs K L Thakur (Nalagarh) and Hoshyar Singh (Dehra).

Ever since the Dehra Assembly constituency was established, Congress has never won the seat.

In 1967, V Bhushan, an Independent candidate won, while in 2012 BJP’s Ravinder Singh Ravi was elected. However, in 2017 Ravider Singh Ravi re-contested on BJP ticket and was defeated by independent candidate Hoshyar Singh. Singh was re-elected in 2022 as an independent defeating Dr Rajesh Sharma of Congress.