lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Apr 01, 2019 15:11 IST

In a quandary after the Congress nominated his son Ashray Sharma as its candidate from Mandi Lok Sabha seat, Himachal Pradesh power miniser Anil Sharma on Sunday skipped a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) function organised at Bhambla village in Mandi district.

The BJP had organised the ‘Mein Bhi Chowkidhar’ campaign in all the four parliamentary seats — Shimla, Mandi, Kangra and Hamirpur — to bolster its election campaign. Anil Sharma, who was supposed to attend the Bhambla event, gave it a miss and conveyed to the party that he could not campaign against his son.

“I have already apprised the party about my decision and dilemma. I have told the party to depute me outside the Mandi constituency for campaigning,” said Anil Sharma, who had quit the Congress along with his father Sukh Ram as well as son and joined the BJP ahead of 2017 assembly elections.

“I cannot criticise my father and son. I have conveyed my unwillingness to campaign against my son to party general secretary Ram Singh. It’s for the party to take a decision and I will abide by it,” he said.

“A few days back I had met chief minister Jai Ram Thakur and apprised him about attempts by the Congress to rope in my son and father. But no one took my word seriously,” said Anil Sharma.

Anil Sharma, 62, took the poll plunge in 1993 assembly elections after his father Sukh Ram was elected to the Lok Sabha. He won the Mandi assembly seat, a stronghold of his father and was made minister of state for youth services and sports in the Virabhadra Singh-led Congress government.

He left the Congress along with his father when the latter fell out with Virbhadra Singh in the aftermath of the telecom scam, in which Sukh Ram was an accused. In 1997, Sukh Ram floated Himachal Vikas Congress (HVC), which won five seats in the 1998 assembly elections and helped the BJP form a government in the state. In 2004, the HVC merged with the Congress.

Meanwhile, a section of BJP leaders has been persuading the chief minister and the state party chief to take action against Anil Sharma. The chief minister had earlier gone on record saying Anil Sharma would be dropped from the ministry if he campaigned for his son.

State BJP chief Satpal Singh Satti has already apprised the party high command of Anil Sharma’s predicament. “Now it’s for the chief minister to take a final call on his cabinet colleague,” said Satti.