Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
In the controversy surrounding objectionable comments made against actor Kangana Ranaut, who is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Mandi, it’s the Himachal Pradesh chief minister, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, who is feeling the heat. After the BJP launched a counter-offensive against the Congress for objectionable social media posts put up by some of the latter’s leaders and sympathisers, including official spokesperson Supriya Shrinate, soon after Kangana’s candidature was announced, the Congress CM on March 26 called her “daughter of Himachal Pradesh” and listed out various welfare works done for women under his regime.
The elections are crucial for him, as along with the parliamentary polls in four seats, the state is witnessing bypolls in six assembly seats. Sukhu’s regime is on tenterhooks as an unfavourable result in these bypolls can end up collapsing his government. The bypolls were necessitated after six Congress legislators who had cross-voted for the BJP’s Rajya Sabha candidate Harsh Mahajan were disqualified from the assembly. They included Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul and Spiti, Rajinder Rana from Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Barsar, Chaitanya Sharma from Gagret and Davinder Kumar Bhutto from Kutlehar. All these six leaders have joined the BJP, which on March 26 fielded them from the same seats.
advertisement
In the 68-member assembly, the Congress’s numbers have been reduced to 34 from 40 post these disqualifications. The BJP has 25 MLAs after three Independents also joined the party. The BJP leadership is reportedly in touch with nine more Congress MLAs, including three ministers. This arithmetic has put the Sukhu government on the back foot.
The controversy related to Kangana Ranaut has complicated the matters for Sukhu, as it is refusing to die down, at least for the time being. In Himachal Pradesh, conventionally, women may not come out to seek leadership positions but do vote in large numbers. To put it in context, Kangana is the BJP’s first woman Lok Sabha candidate from the state. And the Congress, too, had only Pratibha Singh, the incumbent Lok Sabha MP from Mandi. In the Rajya Sabha, though, the BJP has Indu Bala Goswami while the Congress had Viplove Thakur in the past. The present assembly, too, has only one woman MLA—the BJP’s Reena Kashyap. But when it comes to voting, 76.8 per cent of women exercised their franchise in the last assembly election as compared to 72.4 per cent of men.
Despite having a male-dominated political leadership, the state and its people take a lot of pride in their girl child. Take the sex ratio, for instance. In Himachal Pradesh, it is 972 females per 1,000 males, which is better than the national average of 940, as per the latest census. The state also invests heavily in girl education. The recent NSO survey suggests that at least 51.7 per cent females in the age group of 3 to 35 years are enrolled and currently attending schools, colleges or other educational institutions, against a national average of 41.2 per cent. The state also has the lowest percentage (5.8) of females who have never been enrolled.
Kangana, born into a Rajput family in the remote town of Bhambla (now Surajpur) in Mandi district, is seen as a super achiever from the state. Her female-dominated roles in Bollywood movies and sharp opinions on socio-political issues have made her an iconic figure, especially among girls, in Himachal Pradesh. Unlike Preity Zinta, another actor from the state who made it big in Bollywood, Kangana has kept in touch with her roots, which is why she is fondly referred to as bhua (paternal aunt), maasi (maternal aunt) or di (elder sister) by locals in her town. That’s also the reason, why Sukhu or other state leaders don’t want to criticise her or back the objectionable posts made by Congress’s social media brigade.
In a damage-control mode, the party is also pushing Pratibha Singh, wife of the late chief minister Virbhadra Singh and Pradesh Congress president, to again contest from Mandi and take the sting out of the BJP’s attack. But Pratibha, who is upset with the CM, seems to be in no mood to oblige. With the battle lines drawn in the hill state, all that Sukhu wants is for this controversy to die down before there is much damage.
Subscribe to India Today Magazine
Must Watch
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
