In battle for Kangra, Cong debutant Anand Sharma flags Agniveer, invokes NSUI past to counter ‘outsider’ charge

Having already visited all the Assembly segments under the Kangra Lok Sabha constituency in Himachal Pradesh twice as part of his campaign, Congress candidate Anand Sharma, 71, is busy visiting them once again, but in areas that were not covered during his earlier trips.

Last Tuesday, Sharma was at Gangath — also known as Pandian Wala Sahar because of the locally-made brass utensils for which it is famous — to step up his canvassing.

Kangra is the most populous among Himachal’s four Lok Sabha constituencies which are going to polls in the seventh and final phase on June 1.

In the 2022 state Assembly elections clinched by the Congress, the party had won 12 of 17 Assembly seats that fall in the Kangra parliamentary constituency.

But one of its MLAs, Sudhir Sharma from the Dharamsala seat, revolted early this year and cross-voted against the party’s Rajya Sabha poll candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who lost to the BJP’s Harsh Mahajan. Later, Sharma along with five other rebel Congress MLAs was disqualified for disobeying the party whip. All of them later joined the BJP, which also gave them tickets for the by-elections in their seats, which will also take place on June 1.

Gangath, which is also famous for hosting an annual wrestling fair, falls under the Indora Assembly segment, from where the Congress’s Malender Rajan was elected in 2022.

Former Union minister and four-time Rajya Sabha MP, Sharma is making his Lok Sabha poll debut, with his campaign centred on the Congress’s plank against “threat to the Constitution”, unemployment, Agniveer and the BJP’s “failure” in creating 2 crore jobs every year. He touches upon each topic during his address to a gathering of around 200 people.

“This man is intelligent,” says a man in his