Constituency Watch Shimla: Congress turns to six-time ex-MP’s son Vinod Sultanpuri to wrest bastion from BJP

Subhash Rajta

Shimla, May 10

If Vinod Sultanpuri needs any inspiration to wrest the Shimla Parliamentary constituency from the BJP, he will not need to look beyond his father KD Sultanpuri. The senior Sultanpuri had won the Shimla parliamentary seat for record six times on the trot from 1980 to 1998, making the reserved seat for the Scheduled Caste an impregnable fortress of the Congress. However, the BJP won the Lok Sabha seat in the past three elections. The Congress has now turned to Sultanpuri’s son, who is also Kasauli MLA, to win the seat by defeating BJP’s sitting MP Suresh Kashyap.

Despite the envious domination of his father in the constituency, winning the seat for the first-time Kasauli MLA will be tough. The BJP has not only been winning the seat since the 2009 Lok Sabha elections but it has also increased its victory margin with every election.

BJP’s Virender Kashyap had won the seat by a margin of 27,327 votes in the 2009 elections, and then by 84,187 votes in the 2014 elections. In the 2019 elections, Suresh Kashyap emerged victorious by a whopping 3,27,514 votes. Bridging such a wide gap of votes will take some extraordinary effort from Vinod Sultanpuri as well as the party.

Besides the legacy of his father, Vinod Sultanpuri is banking on the 13 Congress MLAs in the parliamentary constituency. The Congress had won 13 of the 17 Assembly seats in the Shimla Lok Sabha constituency in the 2022 Vidhan Sabha elections. Besides, there are five ministers and three Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPSes) in the government from the constituency. Such generous representation to the the constituency in the government will help Vinod Sultanpuri in the elections. Also, Vinod Sultanpuri hopes that fruit growers and government employees will support the Congress instead of the BJP. The Congress’ expectation of support from these two influential lobbies in the constituency stems from the fact that the government has implemented the old pension scheme (OPS) for the employees and shown more sensitivity towards the demands of apple growers than the previous BJP government.

Kashyap, on the other hand, is hoping to benefit from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma and his welfare schemes. In his home district of Sirmaur, Kashyap will hope to get the support of the Hattee community.

Kashyap had won the seat by over 3.27 lakh votes last time but he may face anti-incumbency that may have piled up in the past 15 years. Also, Kashyap will have to deal with the Congress’ allegations that he wasn’t seen much in the constituency in his five-year term and he did not raise the issues of the state effectively in Parliament.