New Delhi, January 20
Several BJP MLAs, including a minister, today descended at the party
headquarters here fearing that they would be denied tickets for the
coming Assembly poll in the state.
The “worried” MLAs met General Secretary Arun Jaitley to lobby
hard for their renomination.
One of the ministers, who met Mr Jaitley was Minister of State for
Primary Education, Environment, Science and Technology Karan Singh,
sources said.
Meanwhile, according to sources, the Himachal unit of the BJP is
finding it hard to finalise the list of candidates to be sent to BJP
Headquarters for approval even as just 10 days are left for the BJP
Central Election Committee (CEC) to meet.
While the BJP Central leadership is keen on discarding at least 15
MLAs and giving ticket to new and young faces, the state unit have so
far decided to deny ticket to only seven MLAs, top party sources said.
Accepting that there has been “some” resistance from the
sitting MLAs against the denial of ticket, a top BJP leader asserted
that the finalisation of candidates will be done “smoothly”.
Meanwhile, the Union Urban Development Ministry has decided in
principle to reconsider the closure of Government Press in Himachal
Pradesh.
According to sources, a formal announcement in this regard is
likely to be made by General Secretary Arun Jaitley on coming Saturday
in Himachal.
It may be recalled that the BJP leadership had last week strongly
demanded the review of the recent Cabinet decision on the closure of
the Government Press, in which over 200 persons are employed.
